saablog

This weekend was a doubleheader, with competitions on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday I competed in the morning run group. I wasn’t really “on my game”; I finished a somewhat disappointing 13th of 14. That happened because I drove really poorly. I really thought I had that '93 Accord sedan beat. But since I kept doing worse each run (my second of five runs was my fastest), I gave him plenty of opportunity to catch up.  Here are the results. It was pretty hot on Saturday.

Sunday it was even hotter. I was in the afternoon run group. The asphalt was very hot. I had the good fortune of going on a course walk that was intended for novices, though most of the people on the walk have actually been autocrossing for several years. The guy who lead the walk talked about where on the course to brake, where to put on the gas, and what line to take through some of the more challenging transitions. That helped me to drive pretty smoothly. There was another classic 900 (a turbo) who ran in the first half of the afternoon session, and I was better than he was. I’d say this was my best autocross performance so far. Check out these results.  I may have only finished 8^th of 10, but I was more satisfied with my performance today than with any of my other runs. I beat the guy in the '93 Accord, but even better I beat Pete and Connie in SD and WSD (in raw time), and I feel like they're supposed to be better autocross drivers than I am. I felt like I’m really getting the swing of how to control the car. I had a lot of fun!

 

Our friend Gretchen visited on Friday for dinner, and again on Saturday. She mentioned that she reads the Saablog, and wanted to check out the car, and maybe even make it into the blog. I needed to put on the competition wheels, so I told Gretchen she could help and I’d put her in the blog. Here she is! Thank you Gretchen! Have fun in China! 

This was the first time Gretchen ever used a torque wrench. It may have also been the first time she ever assisted changing a tire. We'll see if she corrects that statement.

It was my first chance to use the floor jack that Luisa and Ani got me for Fathers' Day. It worked great. Thank you Lu and Ani!

 More tomorrow about this weekend’s doubleheader.

Work has been stressing me out this week. I’m working on a project that is pretty involved, with a Japanese client, who just fired their interpreter/agent in the US. The client in Japan was under the assumption that we were well into testing their product, but in reality we haven’t started. I was to have spent most of June on the project, but my scheduler had other jobs which could be completed quickly that she decided to squeeze into my schedule. So now we’re behind on my project, and my customer’s expectations of quick testing and certification haven’t been met.

What does this have to do with the 900 and the Saablog, you ask? Well, quite a bit. Last week I didn’t drive the 900 all week, I was too busy so it sat waiting for me beside the driveway with a broken sunroof motor, getting pooped on by birds.

This week I got the sunroof motor on Monday, and installed it the same day. The sunroof works GREAT! But I felt like I had too much work to do to put in time on a good blog posting. Work, work, work. Well today, I burned out. At about 1:45 I couldn’t sit here in my basement office another minute.

I got up from my chair, went to the garage, and got the car wash stuff. I washed the 900, then put wax on the hood and roof. It really got a lot shinier, and a lot of the scratches in the paint became much less visible . Next I removed the driver-side headlamp wipe/wash assembly (the passenger side one was removed the first weekend I owned the car, because it is broken). Ani told me the car looked lopsided with only one wiper, and it turns out it really did.

To remove the wiper assembly, the headlight must first be removed. Since the hood of the 900 hinges at the front, it’s tough to get the headlight assembly out. You’ve got to pop the hood so the front edge rises, where two bolts on top of the assembly are accessed. Then open the hood and unfasten the screw securing the headlamp to the corner lamp housing. Next remove the air filter cover so the fourth headlamp screw can be reached; then the headlamp can be removed.

I closed the hood and removed the headlamp, then also pulled off the grill  so I would have more space to work while removing the two bolts holding the thing into the car. Removing the washer fluid hose (and pinching it off with a binder clip from my desk) was easy; but the electrical connector was very difficult to loosen; I doused it with WD-40 and used two pairs of pliers to get it apart.  Someday I might want to reinstall those wipers and the fog lamps… I’d have to get a new fog lamp lens and a new passenger-side wiper arm. I’d probably only do that if I was selling the car. I do really like the somewhat pretentious look of the wiper arms on cars (the 900 is the 4^th car in a row I’ve bought with them), but they’re a little over the top for my “racecar”.

In the process of doing all of this, I realized that the air filter cover is a bit warped, so in re-assembly I tried to fit it back a little better. The filter element is a cylindrical-shaped device that fits into an oval filter housing; it doesn’t seem to fit very well. The whole thing is pretty ugly.

“Re-assembly is the reverse of removal”, with the exception of the fact that I dropped the 8mm socket into the fenderwell when trying to reinstall the headlight. And the fact that the screw securing the headlamp to the corner lamp housing didn’t line up properly. I did manage to fish the socket out of the bowels of the car and get it all reassembled.

I also need to show off the shift knob I got this week along with the sunroof motor. It makes the tactile experience of driving this car with it's failed 2nd gear synchro just a little bit sweeter.

 I’ve got a race this weekend, stay posted!

I've now got SPG (Saab Performance Group) parts in my 900. But only two of them.

 The first is the shift knob. The second is the sunroof motor/gear assembly. They were pulled off of a red 1990 900 SPG being parted out in Massachusetts. You're probably thinking "Hmm, those don't sound like SPG-specific performance-enhancing parts." And you're right. They're not. But they have upgraded my 900s.

The shift knob in my car (and all 900s of its era) is made from rubber, and that rubber has been deteriorating in my car since before I owned it. The shift pattern plaque is gone, leaving a ragged opening with crumbling rubber. Yuck. I didn't really like touching it. For some reason, the one from the '90 SPG is in much better shape. Mine for $15 plus shipping. I'll try to get a photo up pretty soon.

 You all read about the saga of the sunroof motor in the trunk. This morning when I got the new motor, it took me less than 10 minutes to remove the old motor and install the new one. It's perfect. The sunroof glides open silently, and closes the same way. Mine for $25 plus shipping.

I haven't made any posts in the last week because I've been driving the R. Ani installed a Bluetooth phone system in the R last week, so I've been enjoying driving around using it. Technology is great.

 I've gotten some new Saablog readers from people reading my postings on The Car Lounge, a site for gearheads who can't get enough of talking about cars. Two people have IM'd or emailed me asking how the 900 is doing in autocross, stating they have similar cars and are thinking of competing. That's fun.

Speaking of autocross, I've got two days of competetions this weekend on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon.  Come up to Everett and watch me compete. Still haven't done any suspension upgrades, so performance should be about the same. But it should be fun.

It'll be easier to get the car ready for this weekend since Ani got me a new floor jack for Fathers' Day. No more using the spare-tire jack from the trunk! And my dad loaned me his impact wrench for making quick work of the wheel bolts. Awesome, Thank you!

On Saturday afternoon, Luisa helped me wash the Volvo. Then we were hanging out in the driveway when Ani's dad stopped by. The 900 was already parked in the perfect spot to be opened up for a tailgage party. So that's what we did. Here's a photo of Luisa and I enjoying the good life, made possible because I've got the 900.

On Monday I was cruising Saabnet when I saw reference to using the dash-mounted A/C switch (on cars with inoperative A/C) to control the second radiator fan. The first fan is thermostatically controlled based on coolant temp, but that second fan runs only when the A/C is on and functional. Each fan covers approximately ½ of the radiator, so if the A/C isn’t on, you’re only ever passing air through half of the radiator if you’re at a stop. That leads to potential for overheating in hot weather, a known problem in the classic 900.

From the factory, the A/C radiator fan is controlled with the A/C compressor clutch by pressing the dashboard-mounted A/C button. This is interlocked with a temperature sensor in the heat exchanger for incoming air to be cooled (turns off the A/C when a low-limit is reached), and with a refrigerant pressure switch (prevents A/C from being turned on when insufficient refrigerant pressure exists in the system).

By putting a jumper across the two terminals of the refrigerant pressure switch, it takes that device out of the circuit, allowing the A/C radiator fan to be controlled by the dashboard-mounted A/C switch.  As long as the temperature is above freezing at the air inlet, that fan will run when the A/C switch is on. I added this jumper, it was an easy 5-minute mod that will help the car run cooler on hot days. It’s amazing how much fluctuation of the temp gauge I would see on hot days, especially when in slow or stop-and-go traffic. So there is the added cooling.

The lost cooling I referred to is, unfortunately, the loss of sunroof function. The 900’s electric sunroof is driven by an electric motor located under the trunk floor at the very back of the car. The motor drives a small gearset which in turn drives a ball-screw type cable to open or close the roof. The cables run from the trunk, up the C-pillars, and to the sunroof assembly.

 

When I bought the car, the sunroof was duct-taped closed. I think that was done to prevent water from leaking into the car through clogged sunroof drains. I took the tape off and cleared the front drains, though the rear drains remain clogged (I tend to park with the nose of the car pointing downhill for that reason in rainy weather). The electric sunroof worked, though it clunked/jerked when opening, sounding like a gear was missing a tooth or two.

In the past few weeks, the roof has slowed down significantly, and the clunking has increased, as though more teeth were missing from this gear. By posting an inquiry on Saabnet, I was able to discover that all of the gears are a part of the motor assembly; the cables are the only things attached to the sliding roof panel.

On Monday I drove the 900 to The Home Depot to get some 10’ pipes for Ani to build a puppet stage. The roof was so slow to open that I ended up just pushing backward on it once it began to open. And I was able to push it freely with my hand. Uh-oh.

When I got home, I was parked with the car pointing uphill. I tried the switch to close the roof, but it didn’t really work, gravity of the car pointing up hill kept the roof in place. I finally pushed from the bottom of the roof and got it closed. It was evident that the gear had no teeth left.

This morning I did a quick inspection of the motor assembly. I un-mounted it from its place in the trunk, and took off the cable retainer (which frustratingly uses 3/8 inch nuts, rather than something metric… I had to go find my “imperial” sockets. It’s prolly because the motor itself is made by Lucas Electronics Why Saab would use these I can’t comprehend, but I digress. It’s another of the ‘80s add-on features that were put on this fine car designed in the ‘70s and produced in 1992). What I found once I finally got in there was exactly what I had feared: the gear’s teeth were all worn off.

I checked The Saab Site’s 900 FAQs and parts list, and found that that gearset isn’t available by itself; the entire motor assembly ($460) must be purchased. Curiously, the cables are also available for $160 apiece, two are used in the car. I’m afraid that the teeth on the gear failed because the cables are binding, either because they simply ran out of lubrication or because the roof is not riding properly on its tracks. In either case, the force to move the cables is greater than the gear was designed for, so it’s likely that even if I could replace the gear, I would end up wearing it out too.

So the long and the short of it is that the sunroof is inoperative. Which is sad, because I really like driving with it open. Time to look into retro-fitting a manual open/close assembly, which was used before the electric drive was implemented.

My goal going into the season's first competetion was to not come in last place. Not the loftiest goal in the world, but I've got to start somewhere. It turns out that I achieved that goal, but just barely. In my class (ST1), I got 6th place out of 7 entries. I wasn't actually the fastest car around the track. The 7th place '94 Miata actually navigated the course more quickly, but my car's index corrected my time to a 6th place finish. In the overall scheme of things, my time was 79th out of 115 entries. You can check it all out at http://www.wwscc.org/event_results/2006/wwscc06-2.html.  My third run, which shows as my fastest, was actually announced with one cone, which would make my 5th run the fastest. I'd still beat the 7th place Miata.

I feel like one of the biggest limiting factors was the 900's suspension, which I haven't done anything to since buying the car. In fast slalom-type manouvers, the back end of the car tends to get really loose, it feels very bouncy back there, and I can feel it amplifying the car's side-to-side movements. There was a section of yesterday's track where the back end got squirrely every time. I've known that new shocks are needed on the car, I'm thinking it's time to start moving forward with the replacement of those.

In any case, please enjoy a couple of photos of the car in grid before I started driving. In front of me were two cool Porsche 944s like my Uncle Gordy used to have. Next to me was a 2006 Covette Z06, and behind me was the Subaru WRX STi which took first place in my class. Definately some nice cars out there. Remember you can click on the photo for a bit larger view. Sadly I took these pics before all of the other cars pulled in to grid. Enjoy!

Last week I had the drivers seat bottom upholstery fixed by removing it from the seat frame and having it stitched up at a shoe repair place. Total cost: $10.89 including tax. I guess the tax rate is slightly lower in Edmonds than in Shoreline. Again, thanks to Ani for her stellar suggestion of getting it sewn at a shoe repair place.

 In any case, on Friday night I picked up the upholstery, re-assembled the seat, and installed it in te car so I could move the car to mow the grass that was growing under it. It was fairly straightforward to re-install the upholstery, though I didn't tie it down at the center seam, so it doesn't look at fitted as the un-molested passenger seat. Below you can see the seat without and with upholstery.

You can see it's definately not perfect. But it's sewn together for cheap. And that was the goal!

Here's what the car looked like without its seat (after I vacuumed). There wasn't much yucky stuff under there at all, mostly just some dusty stuff from the slowly deteriorating seat cushion foam.

It's interesting that the nuts into which the four bolts (shown) thread are loose in a track, not secured to the car. I guess that's so if the bolts were damaged in an accident or cross-threaded, the bolts can be replaced rather than needing to try to tap new threads into floor of the car. Whatever. I was careful not to move/lose the nuts. So, now the car is back together and a bit nicer to use on a regular basis.

For a change of subject, the first autocross event I'll be competing in with the 900 is this Sunday, June 03, at the Boeing Everett west parking lot. I registered yesterday, and the number 9 was still available as a car number. That's superb, because I happen to have magnetic number 9 decals for my car. In fact, I have six of them, plus three number 7 logos.

When I lived in Portland, my brother got me two number 9 logos as a gift for my '95 900, along with white "Grassroots Motorsports" number boxes. I drove around Portland with those on the car for a few weeks. It was hilarious. I wish I could find photos. But I digress. When Erik moved to Wisconsin, he brought over some "extra" numbers. Turns out he had four more number 9 decals, and three number 7 decals that he had ordered along with my original 9 logos.

The only problem with the numbers is that they're black. The same color as my car. Not enough contrast when magnetically on the car. I wanted to think of a way to make them more visible on the car without using the Grassroots Motorsports surrounds. And today the idea struck. I have extra racing stripe from the segment Erik ordered for my rear hatch. I could make the number racing-stripe orange. I asked nicely for Ani to help me, and she did.

It's really easy to do. Peel back the adhesive paper on the stripe, throw the number down (actually, line the number up with the stripe, then carefully set in place), then cut around the number. Remember to put the decal on there magnet-side-up, so that the orange color is facing out! Ani's good at crafty stuff like this.

Then, voila. Cool orange number(s). With stripes that match the rest of the car.

When not at the track, the orange-stripe 9s can live on the washing machine with their friends, the black 9s and 7s.

Thanks for reading. I'll let you all know how it goes on Sunday. At least I will if I don't come in last place!