Potential '73 99 LE Rally Car(?)

[Luke]

K-jet started in 75.

My experience is that pre 78 cars seemed to have a much higher build quality and rust A LOT less. It could just be that in 78 a lot of the 99 production was moved to Finland to gear trollhatten up for the 900 production. The Finland cars arent much better than belgium ones in my experience. The 74 I am working on has been in the northeast its whole life and then sat in a damp field sunk into the mud for the last 12 years and besides where the battery had leaked and disolved all the metal under it, it wasnt THAT rusty.

[GRMPer]

Yea, but then I bought this '77 from some guy in PA....

[paulh]

K-jet started in 75.

My experience is that pre 78 cars seemed to have a much higher build quality and rust A LOT less. It could just be that in 78 a lot of the 99 production was moved to Finland to gear trollhatten up for the 900 production. The Finland cars arent much better than belgium ones in my experience. The 74 I am working on has been in the northeast its whole life and then sat in a damp field sunk into the mud for the last 12 years and besides where the battery had leaked and disolved all the metal under it, it wasnt THAT rusty.

yeah my 73 is rusty, but nowhere that it really matters, and from what i can tell it wasnt treated nicely throughout its life, and seemingly spent all of it in the northeast. when i got it the undercoating was completely gone in all the fenderwells, and there was just some very light surface rust, so they must have done something correctly.

Paul

[DrewP]

Ok, taking photos of the VIN have certainly paid off! I thought that it looked suspiciously familiar to the engine in my Dad's (in a better place now [the car, not Dad]) '82 900T.

Checked out the car a little more today, and I am almost positive it is the chain driven primaries, rather than the gear drive (don't know the year that changed over though). I am breaking out my 'History of Saab 99 and 900' book tonight and see what I can gleam.

We made a cash deposit and made sure that he would give me a call to get it off of his lot should he have to move it. I have nowhere to put it at home, and will bring it over to my house at the beginning of the summer, or maybe over spring break. I am getting really excited about this, it looks like I made a really good find! It's all about knowing a guy, right?

I know I am being a terrible new member, not searching for this first (gets on my nerves too, but I am on my way out the door), but do the carbs dislike the vibration that rallying would entail? Anything get messed messed up in the float chambers, or anything like that? I am just starting to learn about carbs, we mastered the FI systems in the 900 and Trionic first, so now looking back I want to learn more about what to do to the vintage cars.

Luke, I am going to have to go watch all the videos of your snarly little car now, I am already excited to be lining up a car that I can put ITBs on. Already built one set of side exhaust pipes, why not another? Except this time, I really will have to use the ovalized tubing to keep away from the rocks.



Best,
Drew[/img]

[matt]

I believe the rules state your exhaust must exit behind the rear wheel, it may even be in the "stock location" besides a side pipe would be WAY too low.

[DrewP]

According to this: (My VIN is 99 73 20 28933)



...it has the 2.0 litre engine, and according to here:

http://www.saabnet.ru/org/saab_vin.htm#Saab99

the '20' build code means she was made in Sweden.

It looks like all '73 model years had the Saab designed (or at least revamped) 2.0 litre engines (yay!). My history of 99 and 900 book was inconclusive about which cars came injected, but it looked like most/all of the U.S. import 99s from '72 and newer were mechanical injection, with the EMS models being electronic injection.

It is 4am, so I could be remembering this incorrectly....

Best,
Drew

[DeLorean]

I am pretty sure the D-jet and the K-jet were never available in the same year.

Also, keep in mind that the D-jet cars were 110 HP, the K-jet was supposedly a 5 HP Improvement, so saab would have stuck that in any of their injected cars.

Also, being that this car is a 73, someone must have retrofitted the K-jet system, probably because of an undiagnosable simple problem with the Djet system.

[Rallyho]

re: Jalava Sisters...that was THE best ride Eunis ever had...her stunned silence and awe at my subtle touch told me so.

And yes, after Andrew and I launched the car off the precursor to the X-Games jump at Tall Pines, the car had a definite boat-like look to it.

I think Seth (and maybe Geoff) were there when we cut the roof off so we could get at the cage...when the roof was snipped the car sprung down about 2in...she was tweaked fer-sure.

Now, this pos 900 that I've just spent too much time painting will undoubtably meet it's end in some terrible and fiery way...but she won't bend up like a boat!

[Crazyswede]

Geoff and I crashed once during the Maine winter rally and went off the road twice. Since it was the winter the car had minimal damage...had it been in the summer we would have been in worse shape. Basically we did a spin into a ditch at 40 or 50 mph and did a kart wheel down the ditch hitting a bolder in the process. So basically a big dent from the boulder and not much else.

[Geoff]

Yeah, we kart wheeled the 99. I crunched up the front end under the bumper (the buldge in front of the engine) and put a dent in the LR when we knocked around a 2 foot diameter boulder. I also stuffed it and spun it a few times but never did any major accident damage.

Mike did some work to one of the quarter panels on his 99. They were able to repair it with some hammering and about a gallon of Bond-O. It was pretty banana-shaped when we were there parting it. Watching Mike cut the cage out was pretty wild as the Sawzall would go through and there would be a "BANG!" and the cage would shift about 2" away from the foot.