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Tomarse posted:cheers for the offer! Some utter twat of a postman attempted to deliver my Speeduino and wiring loom today at 14:30 (it was supposed to be a pre-12:00 delivery....). I was outside in the garage by then having given up waiting so didn't hear the doorbell. I got a Ring doorbell when they were cheap on Black Friday last year, for the same reason. Great investment. Never miss a doorbell, and you can tell the guy where to leave it if you're not about. Edit: 
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Aug 29, 2020 22:16
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Aaaaaaargh. I finished the lower part of the windscreen...    but then started poking the bulkhead behind the heater box and made some holes and ended up having to strip out a load more stuff so I can get at them... brake booster out: most of the bolts snapped here rather than coming undone and I think i need to take out the whole brake pedal linkage to replace them. This is behind all the internal heater ducts....  heater matrix and heater box out:  This area was home to a massive mouse nest and stinks of piss. I have hoovered it, wire wheeled it and left it stewing in POR15 metal ready. On the plus side at least I now have a chance of being able to use the heater and vents without it stinking of mice.
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Aug 30, 2020 21:57
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Man, that's some great progress in just over a week!
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Aug 30, 2020 23:43
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Bulkhead and lower windscreen area now done and I managed to get the brake booster frame untangled enough to grind out the snapped captive bolts (its the thing on the dash) Clutch master cylinder has been leaking for the past 20 years so the clevis pin that holds it to the linkage below is a big rusty lump and I cant get a hammer on it in order to remove the cylinder. Have doused it in plus-gas. Cylinder needs to come out so I can fit a seal kit. I suspect that I am going to have to chop poo poo up with the grinder/reciprocating saw and then replace bits. I can lift it up about an inch so can in theory chop the main shaft and then probably saw the clevis pin out working down through the hole. I have a spare master cylinder and am assuming that I can buy a new clevis pin of the right size. Bulkhead shelf took a while as I had to pre-drill lots of holes in my repair sections in the top section  UK goons may notice that the crankshaft hole box that I made is based on a 1 gang backbox..  Also made a VR sensor mount   Its not quite perfectly straight but I think it is close enough and I got sick of trying to bend it the right way to get it spot on. I now need to work out where TDC is and how many teeth I need to be before it and get the trigger wheel bolted to the crank pulley. Changing that belt is going to be a bit of a fucker with the engine in the car but should be possible. Tomarse fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 21:16
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Done some more metalwork today in the front corner Also fitted a flywheel in an attempt to find TDC on my engine.  Got very confused for a while because the TDC marks on the flywheel were not lining up with TDC on piston1. Took the valve cover off to check the camshaft timing marks and found that flywheel TDC didnt match camshaft TDC either. (and I broke one of the stupid plastic oilway connectors when I was taking the valve cover off too  ) Then I realised that the flywheel I am using is not originally off this engine but is instead off an 8v - and the timing marks look to be in a slightly different place due to having a different starter location and cylinder head thermostat housing layout. I'm therefore gonna go with the camshafts and piston and ignore the flywheel
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Sep 1, 2020 20:46
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Only had a couple of hours today but got more metal refitted! Even though it still has some massive holes left to fill most of the flex has now gone from the front wing.   Also finally got an ECU. Its a ready built speeduino compatible. It basically an integrated speeduino and arduino board, which then plugs into a custom mainboard which has some module slots and an output connector on it. Its got an integrated wideband controller and came with a 2.5m wiring loom and an ignition coil module and cost around £400 I am thinking of moving it into the original saab/bosch ignition module housing to gently caress with people (I was going to mount it in the same spot anyway!)  Got an ebay special chinese 6 way fuse and relay box too which is going to hide here and hold all the ECU related relays and fuses. I could wire everything into the original fuse box and use the relays in there (and the spare slots) but the 40 y.o wiring is all a bit hosed and on all my other saab 99's has been unreliable - so i shall just keep the original wiring for all the lights and stuff and put all the engine and ECU stuff into a new one.  My 925mm fan belt also arrived and is a tiny bit too short. Have now got a 935mm on its way which I hope is gonna hit the spot.... (If not then it looks like 937mm and then 940mm - 950mm is too long) Tomarse fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 2, 2020 |
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Sep 2, 2020 20:50
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What the fuuuuuuck you are flying through this! I can't wait to see how this turns out. I would have walked away from that rust... your results are great! Wow.
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Sep 3, 2020 20:11
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I should come out of my favourites and browse the forums more often, great progress but I guess if you've not much else to do might as well keep busy. Love the turbo stripe and the red interior.
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Sep 3, 2020 20:56
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jink posted:What the fuuuuuuck you are flying through this! Doesn’t feel like I am flying through it Was hoping by now to have the engine bay welding all done, the bay resprayed and the engine in and able to be started... In reality I have spent £1000 on parts and have not yet actually got to the point where I can fit _any_ of them. My living room is full of saab parts and I have used 0.5 m^2 of metal sheet.. cakesmith handyman posted:I should come out of my favourites and browse the forums more often, great progress but I guess if you've not much else to do might as well keep busy. Love the turbo stripe and the red interior. I’m actually free to leave home tomorrow now. I think I need another holiday now to recover from the amount of hard work I’ve done on this car!
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Sep 3, 2020 22:26
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Tomarse posted:Doesn’t feel like I am flying through it You are certainly quicker than I. Took me 9 months to swap the diff on my BMW... NINE MONTHS It feels like you'll get done with this soon.
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Sep 4, 2020 02:16
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cakesmith handyman posted:I should come out of my favourites and browse the forums more often, great progress but I guess if you've not much else to do might as well keep busy. Love the turbo stripe and the red interior. This x2. My first thought when seeing the pics in the first post was "that's too loving cool." Crazy progress just like your your big box vehicle so I'm enjoying the ride. 
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Sep 4, 2020 14:51
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Amazing progress, I haven’t started a thread for my Volvo because I work so slowly and I’m trying to build up a bit of a content cushion so I don’t risk the thread getting archived in between updates.
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Sep 4, 2020 15:15
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Goddamn, that was a mission: before:  after: 
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Sep 4, 2020 17:10
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Tomarse posted:I am thinking of moving it into the original saab/bosch ignition module housing to gently caress with people (I was going to mount it in the same spot anyway!) You must do this!
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Sep 5, 2020 10:41
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Spent a long while wiggling the engine back and forth and hope I have now found TDC (using a stick in #1 and the cam timing marks), re-punched some marks on my flywheel and got the trigger wheel and VR sensor correctly aligned with the missing tooth 9 teeth/90degrees ahead of the VR sensor. Its hard to find due to the slight duration of TDC and I might be very slightly out - but hopefully only +/- 1 degree at the most Then I managed to drill my trigger wheel and crank pulley, thread the pulley and bolt it on and only seem to have a max of about 0.3mm of runout. Hopefully this should be fine. I am waiting for my next fan belt to arrive before I finish turning the scrap of flat bar bolted behind the waterpump pulley into a proper alternator mount (pictured not at TDC!)  Fitted an IAT sensor in a convenient pre-existing bunghole  Found a location that works for the boost solenoid and as a bonus the pre-existing Saab return line that i dug out of my parts box just for the rubber bung at the end actually fits perfectly. I'm not sure that a jubilee clip mounting is the most professional technique but it seems to work well!  Then pulled the dissy off and chopped a big bit of 100mm O/D 3mm wall box section up to make a coil pack mount that bolts onto the end of the head. Cant finish it because I don't yet have any long enough bolts/threaded bar/spacer tube/threaded tube for its excessively long bolts..  meltie posted:You must do this! rough measuring has indicated that its gonna be toight and will probably involve some dremeling and patching of the old connector hole. still want to do it though!. I think i can even reuse the rubber boot off the bosch plug too for my wiring... IF I can manage to untangle it from the current loom... The old loom is inside sleeve which has all gone pretty solid with age and is stuck to the wires so I think i need to cut it to get anything out and it will be a mission
Tomarse fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 09:54
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Got sick of welding so did some wiring: Fitted the old battery tray. It has about 5mm of clearance off the cam cover at the back corner so I might have to trim that corner. I found a small battery in my scrap pile that leaves space to allow that and have now ordered a new one that isn't hosed. The tray also needs the base rewelding - but i'll do that later.   All the old battery wiring was destroyed so I have run some new stuff through. It has to go to the other side of the car and unfortunately I cant finalise the position of most of the cables yet until I rebuild the dashboard - but i've temporarily shoved ends on it that should work for the moment. I also found a location for my ECU fusebox and built some brackets  Then I started laying out my ECU loom and adding some power cables into it. The ECU will mount on the old ignition module mounting bracket that goes in that spot.  And then ran some new fusebox wiring  and then wired up the fusebox. I am quite impressed with it considering it only cost around £6  and drilled a hole to run the wiring through behind the old fusebox  and tidied up the engine side ready to attach some connectors (which have not all arrived)  I have had to replace some cables in the old loom and found that I could split it with a knife and either pull stuff through with old wiring or feed it through. 
Tomarse fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Sep 7, 2020 |
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Sep 7, 2020 20:37
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After realising that my flywheel was off an automatic car and that i needed to get a pilot bearing for it I fitted a clutch. Step 1 - break out the 2.5 ton press to compress the new pressure plate and fit the saab special spacer ring which holds the fingers in the compressed position.  This is necessary because you have to slide the whole lot (along with the clutch slave and release bearing) into here and its a tight fit: before doing this i re-sealed the slave  You can then slide the clutch shaft back into place. It is held in with an internal circlip whichis generally an utter bastard to get aligned  I then refitted the engine again and managed to get a nice signal for the ECU off my crank trigger wheel. I struggled a bit the first time I tried this as my VR sensor was slightly too far away and was not getting a clean signal. It is now around 0.5-0.7mm away and gets a perfect signal. I've got the plugs out at the moment so there is no compression affecting the tooth log (and so i dont kill the battery so quickly)  Coilpack is also fitted on its bracket and i've started crimping connectors onto my wiring loom I had to also make some mods and replace some cables in the original loom to deal with the starter motor, alternator and oil pressure light  Then today I also reworked a 900 downpipe into one that fits in my car: I am now going to buy a c900 backbox and think that this will then join to that with the addition of 2 x 45degree bends and a metre or so of straight pipe (to replace the mid-box section) 
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Sep 10, 2020 22:40
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Also - I think there is still a mouse living in the back of the car above the fuel tank as I have twice seen a confused rodent hanging around. Hoping to trap him tomorrow!.
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Sep 10, 2020 23:18
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I laughed at using the truck as a bearing press.  Great progress here. You are still flying through it.
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Sep 10, 2020 23:52
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got myself a bit of donor car! Totally forgot to take any photos of his awesome field of dying saabs!  Its missing a tiny bit at the far end where someone else has had the A pillar but it shouldn't be too bad to patch this (especially since it can be done before I fit it onto the car) I also found out how to separate the outer skin from the inner frame (its lots of spot welds) I'm thinking i might actually cut pretty much this whole section off my car and do two short joints alongside the sunroof hole. I think this is going to be easier to get right than welding right along the front edge - although I will pay for it in time spent drilling the spotwelds out of the side gutter
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Sep 11, 2020 19:48
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 I have never chopped this out of a car I like before!. It was held on by spot welds along the edge along with seam sealer and they were utter bastards to drill out.   I stripped the skin off the donor section and had to do a slight repair to one corner of it. I think the repair went OK. Welded it very slowly and in sections along with a wet sponge. 90% of the bit I put in came off my old roof (fortunately this was a good bit) and I bent it slightly while removing it due to a stubborn bit of seam sealer and a massive spot weld. I think I’ve beaten the worst of it out and Hopefully the rest will level out ok once covered with primer and a tiny bit of surface filler.
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Sep 14, 2020 19:49
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That took some guts for sure.
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Sep 17, 2020 05:29
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I spent a day removing and refitting the panel about 1000 times and gradually removing metal. and did a lot of clamping. Got it lined up and checked that the sunroof tray fits perfectly Then did some very slow welding and then spent roughly 4 hours polishing the tops off all my plug welds in the channel.  Some primer and one coat of filler over the joint roughly knocked down with the palm sander and its looking like i got it low enough and didn't distort anything too much!  Got this bit looking better too:  Also managed to remove the tailgate on my own. It is indeed very heavy  Been cleaning up some surface rust at the back and have also managed to get a fuel pump fitted into the tank  The spare tyre is looking healthy. The wheel itself looks unused so I am assuming the tyre was swapped onto it and whoever MOT'd it last in 1987 didn't bother looking at it. 
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Sep 17, 2020 19:47
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Hell yeah great job on that top. Every post in this thread has been like two weeks worth of progress for me, you're cruisin.
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Sep 18, 2020 02:59
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You are very talented and I am genuinely envious of your abilities.
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Sep 18, 2020 05:34
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Great (and fast!) work on that roof.
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Sep 18, 2020 13:57
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Echoing others; holy poo poo you are talented. I am still blown away at how fast you are doing this... sheesh.
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Sep 18, 2020 21:21
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There is lots of progress happening because I have been doing maybe only 1 or 2 hours per day of actual proper paid work because the world is in the poo poo I did a lot of sanding and fillering today and went to the paint shop and bought some paint. I think It’s gonna take me a lot of primer build to get this roof flat as it has had a respray in the past and the old paint is quite thick in places at the back - so I’m gonna try and blast a first primer coat over it on Sunday I think - expecting to then have to spend another day fixing and filling it and building some areas up. I can’t even easily sand through the old paint to remove it - but it’s well attached on the roof so it can stay! I feel like I’m going about this car in a bit of a messed up order... I still have a load of welding to do on the outer wing, inner arches, rear suspension mounts, inner sills and front valence - but I’m going to get the roof, bulkhead and engine bay painted first... I want to do this so I can fit the windscreen and make the car weatherproof (and get the windscreen off my sofa..), fit the engine to get it out of my way and then start refitting a lot of the dash and interior poo poo that is currently filling my living room and hall. If I can also make the engine start and run it’s gonna make moving it around to work on it a lot easier - I’m just going to have to be really careful to cover it up all the time when I’m grinding.
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Sep 18, 2020 23:12
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Tomarse posted:There is lots of progress happening because I have been doing maybe only 1 or 2 hours per day of actual proper paid work because the world is in the poo poo Well... the world is indeed in the poo poo. At least you are taking that and turning it into productivity. That's positive! I like your plan! This is way over my head in repairs, but that seems like a good approach. Keep us updated.
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Sep 21, 2020 17:04
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jink posted:Well... the world is indeed in the poo poo. At least you are taking that and turning it into productivity. That's positive! Thanks for the motivation post! I’m not feeling very positive but this car is helping! As suspected, getting the roof flat is a total nightmare Masked it up over the weekend and cleaned my garage out to make space and attempt to remove some of the dust.   One long day of spraying and rubbing down and filling and spraying and rubbing down completed and looks like another one to come... This is the good corner  This is still a work in progress  And of course I’m getting a weird reaction from the old paint in a few spots including this one which is a nightmare to rub down. This is after taking it back down and trying again.  There’s another spot being a dick right in the middle of the roof too. Typical.
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Sep 22, 2020 21:39
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Bloody hell you're really putting a shift in making this little Saab look good again!
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Sep 25, 2020 21:29
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I finally finished primering today. It’s not 100% perfect but I can live with the few small marks and dips that remain. The roof seems to have had lots of dips in it from factory! Getting my welded sections flat was easy compared to the dents and dips in the section I haven’t touched!  I also took the cover off the heater box and stripped it down so I could clean all the mouse poo poo and detritus out. It was disgusting (sorry for the rubbish photo, better after shots will follow!) 
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Sep 26, 2020 00:19
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I love this car and this thread. 99 Turbo is way up on my list to own.
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Sep 27, 2020 05:48
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Getting the top laser straight would require a skim coating of body filler across the whole thing and a lot of block sanding. I don't blame you for drawing a line somewhere. I'd also bet some of the dips and imperfections came from body flexing. Looks good from here though!
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Sep 27, 2020 07:07
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StormDrain posted:Getting the top laser straight would require a skim coating of body filler across the whole thing and a lot of block sanding. I don't blame you for drawing a line somewhere. I'd also bet some of the dips and imperfections came from body flexing. When i started on this car i specifically vowed that I was not trying to restore it to concours condition but was going for 'usable and wont go any rustier' - but with paint surface prep I find it hard to stop trying to make it flawless! After having a nightmare with some paint reactions from its 80's resprays undercoat I have finally got paint on the roof and it doesn't look terrible The front is awesome (the reflection of the door makes the back look weird in this photo)  The back is "good enough, send it"  Because I lost my first coat and a 1/2 of colour on the roof to stupid paint reactions (and then spent 8 hours and approx 15 sheets of 600 and 1200 grit paper) flatting it back I ran out of colour coat so the bulkhead has had zero coats of colour and the lower screen panel has just had one coat of colour which will now have to be rubbed right back before I do any more to it
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Sep 27, 2020 20:15
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Tomarse posted:When i started on this car i specifically vowed that I was not trying to restore it to concours condition but was going for 'usable and wont go any rustier' - but with paint surface prep I find it hard to stop trying to make it flawless! Yeah holy poo poo I wish someone had warned me of that. The lid of my truck looks good... but I kept going back to it when I'd catch something in a weird light. Or I'd find a rock chip. Or I'd fix a few rock chips and say 'no that's fine' but if the filler came out for anything else I'd end up getting just a few more little spots. Are there any difficulties getting paint there? What are you using?
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Sep 28, 2020 03:45
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I’m still alive Today I wet sanded and polished some of the orange peel off my roof and then polished the lower windscreen panel where the laquer had bloomed slightly. It started pissing it down the day I painted the lower panel and the electric fan heater in my garage couldn’t quite do enough  Tomorrow I am hoping to refit the dash lining and the windscreen
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Oct 17, 2020 22:06
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Didn’t know this thread existed. You’re doing an amazing job and this makes me miss my old 900 a ton. One of the few cars I wish I had kept.
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Oct 18, 2020 13:53
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Mcqueen posted:Didn’t know this thread existed. You’re doing an amazing job and this makes me miss my old 900 a ton. One of the few cars I wish I had kept. Thanks!  Glued the dash panel down and refitted the windscreen. I'm getting pretty good at doing saab screens now! Could do with new trim sections - gonna see if i can find them for sale somewhere.   Have also rebuilt most of the sunroof mechanism ready to refit that. The internet says i can remove the painted panel out the top without messing with dropping the whole tray so i might just refit it all and take the panel out again once i am ready to paint it. I managed to buy a non-rusty donor c900 sunroof panel (unfortunately in metallic blue) for the bargain price of £30 (and a 250 mile round trip to pick it up) to replace the absolutely hosed original one.
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Oct 19, 2020 22:36
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| # ? May 1, 2024 23:32 |
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Wow this is looking great. I am barely remembering how bad it was in the begining. Keep it going, you are doing a fantastic job.
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Oct 20, 2020 02:04
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