saablog

Ani and I custom-ordered our V70R in 2004. We have now owned it for a few weeks shy of 2 years, and have covered about 26,000 trouble-free miles. One of the car's features is a 4C active suspension (4C stands for Continuously Controlled Chassis Concept), which is described in Volvo sales literature as "a semi-active suspension with continuously controlled shock absorbers by Monroe-Ohlins, featuring three dynamic chassis modes (Comfort, Sport, and Advanced). As you drive, the system collects huge amounts of information about the way the car moves and behaves. It analysis [sic] the information and responds instantly by adjusting each shock absorber individually to suit the road and driving conditions. Al this takes place with extreme precision up to 500 times a second." Marketing people can always make things sound so easy and perfect. Look at diagram below to see how complex the Swedish engineers made this system.

I've been reading the Swedespeed R Forum since before I ordered the car, and have read all of the comments about 4C, and its positive or negative influence on the R's handling. In comfort mode, the back end can hop over uneven pavement due to measured oscillations at the rear of th car, and Advanced mode offers a very harsh ride (but it changes the electronic throttle mapping to provide more responsive accelleration). The most common complaint is that 4C can cause the car to feel unsettled, especially on certain uneven pavement types. I've experienced both of these, though I've always been relatively happy with the car; my ownership experience has been a good one. I haven't felt the need to mechanically modify the car, which is the most powerful and capable car I've ever owned. Somehow, the R isn't as emotionally involving as any of my previous cars (the two Saab 900s and our current 9-5), but that's just my personal perspective. I guess I'm just a Saab guy at heart.

The only minor disappointments with the car have been the huge turning radius (which I totally knew about and accepted before ever ordering mine), and the occasional skittish-ness of the suspension. Those two combine to make the car drive "big", i.e. it seems to drive like a car that's bigger than the V70R is. I had read about other people being happy with the handling after disabling 4C, but never bothered to try it out.

Today I was cleaning out the luggage compartment, and removed the fuse access panel. From there I saw the 4C accelerometer mounted, and decided to unplug it and go for a drive, as I've read about many people doing on Swedespeed. Verdict: a more settled ride. Not quite as buttoned down, but definitely more settled. I'd have been perfectly happy if the suspension felt this way from day 1.

When I got home I hooked the sensor back up, closed the fuse panel, and finished my vacuuming of the luggage area. It's great to know how it feels. And to know I can do that any time I want. But like most of the active Swedespeed members, I'll keep the system plugged in. It was a great little experiment, made possible by all the people who have posted on Swedespeed over the past ~3 years about how to do try that out.

I posted about this on the R Forum, you can see my post and the comments it has generated here.

The next "mod" will come in a month when my daughter turns 1, when I can turn her car seat around to forward-facing and get some front-seat legroom back. I can't wait.

As you've likely already read here on Saablog, I left last Saturday to travel to Wisconsin and Minnesota to visit Erik and Katie, and to work, respectively. I drove the 900 to the airport because I'm not concerned about door dings or other careless behaviour around the 900 like I am around the V70R, which still *amazingly* doesn't have any door dings. (Stating that has certainly just jinxed that fact into impending obsolescense).

In any case, when I pulled in to the SeaTac garage last Saturday and drove up to the 7th floor on the sweeping left-hand circular ramp, my phone headset slid off of the passenger seat onto the floor between the seat and the door. So did some CDs I was bringing with me. After parking, I turned on the interior light of the car to locate all of my stuff on the floor in the relative darkness of the parking garage. I remember thinking "Hmm, I need to turn off the interior light so I don't drain the battery." Evidently that's where that productive train of thought ended.

While I was racing from Minneapolis to Madison and enjoying my visit to the upper Midwest, the interior lamps were steadily draining the battery in the 900. When i got into the car yesterday, after having pre-paid my parking ticket (special pricing means $89/week instead of just $20/day), I turned the key and heard the dead mechanical key sound that I had heard on this day. I instantly looked at the interior lights switch, which was, of course, still in the ON position (actually the "2" position, I had to read the manual to figure it out when I got the car). Poop.

I've parked in lots and garages that offer complimentary jump-starting services. Port of Seattle's SeaTac Airport parking garage is not one of those. I headed in to the airport and found the information desk, where the volunteer made a couple of calls to determine that I could have a taxi jump-start the car for $15, or I could have the Valet Parking people jump start it for $10, cash only. Hmm. Since I had $11 cash, I opted for the cheaper jump. Good thing I didn't have a drink on the plane.

So I headed to the Valet station, filled out a liability waiver, and a valet followed me up to the car with a jump starter. It started right up. The valet had never seen a car whose hood hinged at the front. He made a really big deal about it.

When I got down to the exit gates, I chose the cashier-staffed lane, just in case. Good thing, as it had been exactly 25 minutes since I had paid my ticket. I owed another $2. Which is ridiculous since I'd already paid the weekly maximum. Since I had only one dollar cash left I put it on the good old Corporate American Express and began my hour drive home, having learned some kind of lesson. It remains to be seen exactly what that lesson is.

We went to watch my brother in a bike race this morning. Parked at the area by the course was a 9-3 Viggen 3-door, in Viggen (Lightening) blue, with the sport seats with blue leather inserts. Really cool.

There was also a 9-5 Aero sedan at the course, a red one, and we passed a red 9-5 Aero wagon and another 9-5 wagon with bikes on top on a cool looking rack.  Those are fun cars to see here in what I would consider to be Buick-land.

 Edit: Look how fast I went on my way to Madison in the Grand Prix! And that's NOT the fastest I've ever driven...

Tonight I drove the 900 through Seattle's rush-hour trafic to my parents' house in Kennydale. Tomorrow morning I'm flying out to Madison to visit my brother and Katie, and I'll stay with my parents tonight.

My aunt Donna and uncle Gordy arrived from England today so my uncle can work at Boeing, and my aunt is visiting the family while he works. When I arrived, I parked my uncle's rental Jeep in the driveway at my parents' house (they are staying with my parents for the duration of their visit). When it was time to go to dinner at Tapatio's in Newcastle, the five of us decided to take the 900 to dinner, as my uncle was quite tired due to the jet lag.

I've never had anybody use the backseat of the 900 before today. It was christened tonight by two full sized adults (my dad and uncle), plus my Pig Aunt, rididing back there while my mom and I were in the front seats. We drove up 76th (a very steep hill in Newcastle, the 2nd steepest I've ever driven on) to the restaurant. In 2nd gear, the car didn't slow below 35 MPH going up the hill, though it was audibly working pretty hard (and I ground the gear going into 2nd from third... still need to practice that heel-and-toe shifting). With that much weight in the car, the suspension sags to the point that the exhaust rattles against the underbody at low RPMs.

Why didn't I drive the Volvo, again, since it has more-than-double the power and almost twice the space? Oh yeah, I hate leaving that car in the SeaTac parking garage, whereas I don't care about leaving the 900 parked over there. At least when it's in the airport garage, it's saved from the daily barrage of bird crap it gets when parked outside of our house. Today was the third day in a row I've washed bird crap off of the car before driving it. It was too heavy to leave it on the car.

George asked now about the engine compartment of the 900. He's used up two of his three wishes so far, but without further ado...

Hmm. That almost worked. It's hard to scan in something 2 pages wide on a scanner meant for only one page. In any case, shown above is about .85 of the beautiful cutaway drawing of the 1992 Saab 900 SPG. It differs from my car in that mine has no turbocharger, breakerless electronic ignition, nor front and rear spoilers. The powertrain layout is the same, though. The engine is longitudinally mounted, with the drive belts at the back (against the firewall) and the clutch at the front/bottom of the engine, with the transmission directly behind it, as shown below. The above illustration fails to include the air conditioning compressor, which is mounted basically atop the engine at the back where it can get a drive belt to run it. It's in the way of everything, from belt changes to oil changes to radiator hose changes. I've finally got the tools, so removing that beast is one of the next orders of business.

So the 900 is either ass-backwards in how the engine is installed, or ass-sideways. You can be the judge of that.

My friend Zane recently gave the saablog a little bit of free advertising on his blog. Thanks Zane. As a result of that, my first visitor from inzane.blog.com was George in Arizona (SexyArmo), who asked a question about the 900's suspension.

I visited The Suspension Bible, and couldn't really identify the exact suspension setup that my car has. But we're all in luck, because I have the 1992 Saab 900 Form and Function book, a brochure that Saab published to expose all of the car's innovative engineering solutions. Fortunately my obsession with Saab started in 1992, and coincided with my working at a Saab dealership that summer, which gave me access to all types of Saab promotional materials. It's merely fate that I actually found my '92 on craigslist so that my car matches the literature. Below are illustrations of the suspension in the 900. Sorry about the crappy scan quality.

The front suspension is described as a double wishbone, with the spring not mounted over the shock absorber, but instead pivot mounted. The rear suspension is described as a Watt's Link configuration.

Now we're all just a little more knowledgeable about the 900. I still wonder why the stupid belts are facing the firewall though.

I thought I understood double-clutching the transmission. You just let the clutch out (in neutral) on the way from first to second gear, and then when going into second gear it doesn’t grind.  I thought it was just some kind of magic.

On Sunday I took my dad for a ride to Home Depot in the 900, and I learned the story behind the “magic”. Turns out it isn’t magic at all, it’s just a mechanical speed-matching between the speed of the parts in the transmission and the speed of the crankshaft on the other side of the clutch (or something close to that).

I had wondered why I could always double-clutch on the 1-2 shift, but could never do it on the 3-2 shift. It always ground terribly. Dad explained that before the 1970s, most cars (at least the ones he drove) didn’t have synchromesh transmissions, at least not full synchromesh. To shift between gears that weren’t synchromesh, you had to double-clutch, or heel-and-toe shift.

I’ve ready about heel-and-toe shifting in car magazines, but never really understood the technique or the purpose. Turns out it’s all about not being abusive to the synchros- and to driving more smoothly.

My dad explained that in order to shift from 3^rd to 2^nd without grinding, I had to double clutch shift, but while in neutral I needed to rev the engine, so that the engine revs are where they would be if I was already in 2^nd gear at that speed. He said that when he was learning to drive, his family had a Renault Dauphine. I’m not even sure what that looks like, but mechanically it had a very small engine as well as a transmission that wasn’t synchromesh into 1^st gear. He had to double-clutch shift into 1^st gear if the car wasn’t fully stopped, which happened quite often because the car would lug in 2^nd at relatively low speeds. It required use of the heel on the gas pedal and toe on the brake (or the other way around) to be slowing the car while revving the engine.

We stopped and switched my dad into the driver’s seat for a demonstration, because I wasn’t having any luck trying to do what he was explaining. Sure enough, he was able to shift from 3^rd to 2^nd without grinding by doing just what he had explained. Way cool.

I finally did some practicing yesterday. I had gone to Bellevue to meet James (the guy whose wheels I bought) to trade him the payment for the last 2 wheel cap retaining bolts. James and I had a good lunch at Burgermaster after finally parking; we were in the parking lot for several minutes watching this woman try to park her big Mercedes with very little driving skill. She essentially got herself sideways to the driveway, similar to when Austin Powers tried to turn that cart around in a hallway in one of his movies. Except the lady in the Mercedes had more room and a much more expensive cart.

In any case, in my driving around Bellevue I did practice the double-clutch shifting, with a middling degree of success. It’s somehow opposite to the way I learned how to drive, to shift into a lower gear while racing the engine. But I’m getting better at it.

Because I already had the 900 in Bellevue, with its cool wheels on, I decided to stop by Barrier Volvo after lunch and show it off to Sue. I didn’t know it was supposed to be her day off, but it didn’t matter anyhow because she was there delivering a really nice looking S40 T5 AWD to a guy about my age. The S40 was in the showroom, similar to the way our V70R was in Jim Fisher’s showroom, but the car was parked far from any fire alarm control panels, so that in his excitement the guy couldn’t bump into the alarm control panel and set off the alarm (which is exactly what I did when we picked up our Volvo).

Sue hurriedly finished off the delivery of the S40 and brought her client out to show off my 900. I hope the client doesn’t feel badly about that. Sue thought the wheels really helped the car out.  I agree that they do. She had the great idea to put some Barrier plate frames on the car so it could get a free car wash (it was pretty dirty). So she brought out the frames, and I began installing them. Some of the salesmen who work with Sue came out to check out the 900 too. It was a proud moment for me to show off the 900. She insists I can’t put the racing stripes on it. I am intending to put them on, it’s one of those things I just haven’t gotten to yet.

I thanked Sue and headed off to the car wash, using the lane for “Barrier Preferred Customers” rather than the “Barrier Vehicles Only” lane. The car wash attendant asked if this was my first visit, then he explained the free and optional pay services. As he was going through his explanation, he stated that the highest level of wash service ($75) includes a lot of attention to the surfaces of the vehicle, but that such a service is no substitute for a hand waxing of the paint, which on an older vehicle such as mine would be required to take the dullness out of the paint. I think this guy who is used to seeing new Audi, Saab, Volvo, Porsche, and Mercedes vehicles was pretty much rolling his eyes at my 14 year old Saab with visibly oxidized paint and rusty trim, wondering why I would feel entitled to run my old car through his nice carwash. He dutifully brushed the wheels and sent me in to the wash bay, where I was afraid some trim pieces might come loose by the abrasive wash brushes and pads.  The car came out of there just fine, and much cleaner when I entered. Thanks, Sue.

I’ll definitely need to keep practicing the double-clutch shifting. But now that I understand exactly what it is I’m doing, I’m in much better shape. So I owe my dad thanks for the driving lesson. At age 32, I’m still learning new tricks. And like they say, practice makes perfect.

This morning Luisa helped me put the new wheels on my car. She helped by taking a long morning nap. She went down about 8:00, so I got dressed, went to the garage, and filled up the tires with air. They were pretty low on pressure. (I’ve got to say I love my air compressor. Thanks Dad. )I also figured out which wheels needed to go on which side (since the tires on them are directional) and decided which should go on front and back (two tires had somewhat more wear than the other two).

After filling the tires, I pulled the 900 into the garage to begin the tire change process. I used my torque wrench with 19mm socket and 3 inch extension to loosen the lug nuts on the driver side of the car. Then I got my Papa’s ancient hydraulic jack out but sadly the car sits too low to the ground for that jack to fit underneath. So I had to dig the emergency jack out of the trunk; I raised the front of the car first and changed the wheel. Then I was able to put the hydraulic jack under the back of the car (since it was already higher off the ground due to the front being jacked) and changed the back wheel. Tightened with the torque wrench to 90 ft-lb, and let the car down.

Next I took my setup to the other side of the car.  I loosened the first lug bolt on the rear tire without problem. When I went to the next nut, it was really tight. Suddenly I felt it give… but wait. That wasn’t the bolt turning. It was the extension I had on my socket, shearing off inside of the socket due to the stress. Hmm. Thank you, Discount Tire Company in Lynwood for tightening the bolt so tight. No problem, I’ve got another socket set I can dig the extension out of. So I do, and I try to loosen the bolt again. And… damn. This one began to shear as well. So I stopped.

My other socket set, which was actually my first, was a birthday present from my parents. My brother got one just like it. Came in a blue metal case, with metric sizes up to 17 mm and imperial sizes. As I’ve had it a long time, some pieces (like the screwdriver handle) are broken, and the sockets are always out of order. We got those for that birthday so we would be able to work on our bikes, and on our ’79 Toyota truck. The set always worked just fine for that purpose. But having broken two parts in the last week, I’m learning that it was perhaps not the highest quality.

I ended up digging the Saab lug wrench tool out of the trunk to loosen the rest of the bolts on that side of the car. I literally had to jump up and down on the end of that tool to loosen the bolts. Not cool, Discount Tire Company. But they loosened, and the rest of the wheel swap was uneventful. I used the torque wrench with a 6 inch extension to tighten the bolts.

So here’s the car with the 2^nd set of wheels on it. It looks like I need to lower the car a bit now, there’s a lot of air between the tires and the wheel arches.

Below is a photo of James’ 900 with the same wheels on (he’s the guy who sold me the wheels).

 

I had to find space for the sunburst rims with Azenis mounted to keep in the garage. I did find one, in front of the Volvo. The garage is a huge mess. I need to get out there and organize. Now that there is our new crawlspace to keep stuff in, I’d like to move some of the things from the garage to that space.