saablog

Yesterday I drove my 900 downtown
Seattle to a project. I’ll usually take the R to jobs, but parking downtown in the R is always dicey due to the Kingdome-sized turning radius, so the 900 was pressed into service.

Driving the 900 to work made me realize what a modern convenience automotive cupholders are. No joke. It’s a challenge to drink and drive a manual transmission car when the can of Diet Coke has to always be held (tragedy- we’re out of Diet Pepsi at our house). I did discover that a can will wedge into the opening of the instrument cluster, though it will obscure one of the gauges. It’s probably best to obscure the temp/gas display.

So I parked, I worked. On the way back I stopped at a Shucks auto supply to get some power steering fluid, as mine was at the “add” mark. I noticed that because at practice on Saturday the power steering seemed to be making a lot of noise after each run. I checked the fluid level, and the level was low and the fluid was bubbly/frothy. When I was parked outside of Shucks, the 900 was attacked by pooping birds. They liked to mark the hood and the trunk. No poop was on the roof or the windows. Bird poop-tacular. It was gross.

After filling the fluid, I drove home. I had a lot of work to do, so I didn’t want to wash the entire car. So I just washed the hood and the trunk. Then I got inspired. The paint looked so dull. So I got out my 3-step Meguiar’s polish/wax. I just did it on the small trunk lid below the rear window. Took about 15-20 minutes. It improved the shininess like crazy. While the paint certainly doesn’t look new, it looks much better. I’d like to do that to the whole car, but it will take time. Before I can do the roof I need to get the mossy green stuff out of the roof gutters, and I need to get the leftover adhesive off of the sunroof and its surround from the previous owner’s duct tape job. I want to do all of that before I put the stripes on that my brother got me for my birthday.

Unrelated to the paint treatment, I’ve been searching for a set of wheels to use with my autocross tires. I found a set of SPG rims on ebay that are the right size, the bid is $150, but shipping would be $100. A guy from Saab Club Seattle has some rims for sale with usable tires for $150, but they’re 6.5 inches wide, so I’d have to use them as the everyday wheels and mount the autocross tires on my existing wheels. Those wheels are from the original Saab airflow kit, but they’re 5-spokes that I don’t’ find particularly attractive. The same guy had the directional 3-spoke wheels that I really like, that are the right size, but he’s asked Scanwest to sell them for him…that was a while ago. So I’d have to call Scanwest and see if they can find the wheels, and see how much money they want for them. That sounds like a hassle. Stay tuned for the resolution to this thrilling tale of wheels.