'75 99 Rally Car Restoration

[Luke]

Painted the a-pillar area flat black to reduce glare. I think is looks really nice and should especially help keep reflections down off the codrivers map light at night.

[max]

Ferrari banner =

[squaab99t]

Painted the a-pillar area flat black to reduce glare. I think is looks really nice and should especially help keep reflections down off the codrivers map light at night.

Dude you rock... Thanks for posting the basics how to on the cage. Fantastic insights on how to weld up the back sides. Question on the main hoop bases. Did you just bridge the drop down hole with the required 1/8" doubler plate?
Great inspiration for this winter's project. Cage in the 76 ems.
Thanks again for the photo doc.

[GRMPer]

Wow, that's really cool. I'm glad to see the '75 isn't just languishing away somewhere.

Per

[SaabsBreakDown]

This is a really cool project!! Surely I could not fit my 6'8" frame in this thing with the main hoop where it is, but I can look :) I put mine several inches behind the b-pillar and I wish I would have gone more.

I really like how you do little bends here and there to make everything accommodate people, heads and seats better. We were so tired of bending at the time, but looking back I wish I would have done more, especially to get the windshield bar and roof diagonals up higher.

What are your plans for the engine?

[ric]

Ferrari banner =

Yes ! Why the Ferrari banner ?

Your car look´s great

[Luke]

Ferrari banner is my friends.... both my shop mates work full time for a company that specializes in Ferrari (and Alfa and Buggati or that matter) restorations, and rent a workspace with me for their own projects. I learn a lot from them! Beautiful cars, but frankely the swedes are much better engineers!

Off topic, but heres a few pics:

[ric]

What can I say, lucky you with friends like that who understand the time it takes to do anything with a car. I´m a little jealous.
Right, back to the topic.

[SaabsBreakDown]

Is that a 12 cyl? or 16??

Wondering if that was ALSO an answer to my "what are your engine plans?" question..!

[Luke]

Its a 12 cylinder, from a 350S I think. To bring it back to SAAB related stuff... the engine was raced by Stirling Moss, whose sister was married to Erik Carlsson!

[Luke]

Wondering if that was ALSO an answer to my "what are your engine plans?" question..!

Oh, the motor, It will be a B motor on carbs with some tweaks :)

[Luke]

A little more progress has been made, the cold weather has been making things difficult but I've managed to get a few things done.

The doors and hood were stripped to bare metal:

This hood had about 4 layers of paint on it, originally Topaz yellow, then silver, then white.
I really prefer to chemically strip SAABs (as opposed to mechanical stripping) as it leaves the very nice zinc phosphate coating intact. You can literally strip these cars to bare metal and leave them outside in the rain for a few days without any rust blooming, if you sand through the zinc rich layer you will get rust bloom within a day.



This brand of stripper seems to be head and shoulders above other brands I have tried, I definatly recommend it.



These door came off my silver '74 EMS and were remarkably solid and straight. Thats bare metal!

Its a pity the unique early ems door latches interfer with the cage, as I would have really liked to keep them.


After all the paint came off the hood it was in good shape too:



Shot the doors and hood with epoxy:






Then the next day with urethane sanding primer:

[Luke]

I also bead blasted a front x-member and primed that while I was at it.



Blasted and painted a bunch of misc parts, like cool EMS mirrors.


Powder coated the pedals:




Wrinkle finish on the trip computer shroud (pre-wrinkle)



I also cleaned up and re-dyed the carpets, yep thats right this rally car (like many rally cars of the mid 70's) is getting carpet, deluxe!

[Jordan]

I was going to dye my carpets too, I have a set of the dark red ones though... yours look good, what brand dye is that? I painted my interior a dark gray so if anything isn't covered up it doesn't scream white underneath, but I'm trying to not make it look like a race car.

[adamgent]

Yes, what did you dye the carpets with? I didn't think you could dye nylon or polyesther or whatever plastic it is?