saablog

On Saturday I was able to clean the 900’s carpet, and lay it and the floor pads out in the unexpectedly warm sun to dry. To get the carpet out, I pulled the knee bolster, my first time doing that. The two bolts in the front fenderwells were difficult to find, but easy enough to remove.

 When I pulled the bolster off, a honey stick fell onto the floor of the car. It’s one of those plastic straws, sealed at both ends, (presumably) filled with honey. It’s very dark in color. Upon further inspection, I found a second honey stick stuck in the mesh of the collapsible steering column support. Hmm. I wonder if some factory workers in Trollhattan left those there 14 years ago, or if they were left by somebody who more recently worked on the car in the US?  Although honey is said to never go bad, I’m not going to try the honey that’s been aging in the car for an undetermined amount of time.

Click on the photos to make them bigger. In the photo below, you can see the honey stick a bit below the wiring harness.

 With the bolster off, I also lowered the heating duct so I could get a look at the pedal switches, in an attempt to troubleshoot the inoperative cruise control system. All vacuum lines and electrical connections are in place as they should be, so either the vacuum pump is toast, or the controller is toast. At least that’s my assumption.

While I was under the dash looking at those cruise control connections, I had a good view of the steering column. I’ve read online that there are bushings in the steering linkage that can wear out, leading to vague on-center feel, or wandering. While my car has always tracked straight down the road, there has always been a lot of free-play in the wheel. While I was looking at the steering column under the dash, I turned the steering wheel gently side-to-side, in “dead” wheel zone, to look for the location of that bushing. What I found, instead, was the big rusty bolt in the center of the photo below, which is where the steering column attaches to the steering shaft that comes through the firewall. At that coupling, I the steering column was rotating, but the shaft wasn’t. I put a 13mm socked on the bolt, and tightened. Probably between ¼ and ½ turn. That took the play out of the steering. I couldn’t wait to get the car re-assembled and road tested.

The last thing I did on Saturday was to ensure all four sunroof drains are clear. I cleared them, blew compressed air through them, and water tested them. All are flowing. I’ll park the car under a car cover pretty frequently now to prevent them from clogging again.

On Sunday, it took a little over an hour to re-install the pads, carpet, dash, console, and seat. It mostly went back together easily, with the exception of where the center console bolts to the knee bolster behind the ash tray. Somehow that knee bolster center bolt isn’t in quite the same position/angle as before, so the ash tray bracket didn’t fit in quite flush with the console, which makes the whole ash tray just a bit askew.

After re-assembly, I took the car for a road test. It all seems to work the same as it did before the flood, with the exception of the steering which is better than ever, without the big dead/wandering spot. How comforting to have the car steer right where it's pointed.

It’s sunny this week, and I’m parking the car in the sun to let the rest of the absorbed moisture in the headliner bake out. It’s sagging a bit more above the driver’s door, but otherwise not much worse for wear. I think that in the 900’s previous life, it spent a lot of time with the sunroof leaking, which is what caused the headliner to sag so badly and be stained in the first place.

If the roof hadn’t leaked, I wouldn’t have found and tightened that bolt in the steering column. So it’s a good thing, right?

Sunday morning dawned overcast, a cool day with a threat of showers. With showers holding off, it was a perfect day for the last race of the WWSCC season. Ani, Luisa, and Larry (Ani’s dad) were to come up later in the morning to watch me drive.

I ended up arriving about 8:00, which allowed plenty of time to register, get through tech, and get a few course walks in. I was in the first work group / second drive group. The first drive group took FOREVER to complete. Their first round saw seemingly half of the competitors getting very lost on course. Working at station 1, we had tons of cones to chase. At least I was working with some interesting people, Keith and Ivan from my ST1 class, and Pete, whose car Zane co-drove in the event.

I saw Ani and Luisa arrive in the R about 10:00, followed immediately by Larry in his XC90. Larry backed the XC up to the fence so that they could have a tailgate party while watching the cars. The split tailgate of the XC also meant that Luisa was somewhat contained, and she had a fun time playing in the back of the car. It was great to have Ani and Luisa there to watch me, for the second week in a row. It feels like a fun family activity when they’re there watching. They both wore their Black Saab- Orange Stripe shirts to show support. Very cool. Click on the photos to make them bigger

Here are Ani, Luisa, Katie, Erik and I modeling our team shirts. Cool! Props to Ani for designing the BLACK SAAB ORANGE STRIPE logo!

Unfortunately, it was 11:00 before the first run group completed their runs and we came in to get started. By that time, Luisa was getting hungry and I was getting… tired? Certainly tired of standing around.

My first run was clean, but I thought it was slow. My second run was better, still clean and I shaved about ½ second off of my time. After the 2^nd run, the family left so that Luisa could have some lunch. Without my fans/family there to observe, I got worse. Too much wheel spin through a tight corner slowed me down and netted me a cone on my third run. On my fourth run I carried too much speed into the “wall” near station 1, taking out four cones and coming to a dead stop in the process. Not a good way to finish up. That netted me a 10^th place finish out of 14 cars, check out the reults here. The 1993 Honda Accord driven by Chris Kmetz, which has been my benchmark competitor through the last 2/3 of the season, beat me handily, with a 6^th place finish based on a time about 1.5 seconds faster than my best time. Chris was one place out of trophy position.

I stuck around for the trophy presentation; and was dismayed to discover that the ’89 Plymouth Acclaim that I scoffed at during WWSCC Event 7 took the 4^th place trophy. I never got a trophy, but that stupid Acclaim did. I can find solace knowing that my best time was more than two seconds faster than his, that he trophied because he was in a slower class. But damn it, I want a trophy. Guess I’ll just have to drive faster.

Driving faster is reliant on making some upgrades to the 900. I need to replace the shocks, and I think I also need to replace the springs. I posed the question about suspension upgrades on Saab Central, and was reminded that changing the springs to a non-stock spring will put me in a different class for autocross. I don’t want that.  So perhaps I’ll replace with OE springs and better shocks/bushings.

The WWSCC season ended with me in 5^th place in ST1. That’s out of a total five drivers eligible for the championship (due to the requirement of driving in at least 7 events).  So as you look at the results here, you can see that I’m 5^th of  31 drivers. Awesome. Only when you look at the requirements for championship do you see that the top 7 scores are taken for championship eligibility. So I finished about 3.5 points out of fourth place. Those points are easily made up next season with a better suspension setup. So the next several months will be spent trying to keep the car running, and at the same time improve its handling.

Keep visiting the Saablog for updates. And leave me comments to let me know you were here. Thanks for your support and comments this season!

I had expected to be writing a blog entry this week about the last race of the season, about how the race went and how the season went, and about the planned upgrades to the 900. That will have to wait.

Yesterday I took off the Falken Azenis race tires and put back on the 5-spoke wheels with thick-treaded tires. While I had the right-front wheel off, I attempted to tighten the power steering hose clamps to stop the PS fluid leak. After that I drove to the gas station and Home Depot, then parked the 900 in its customary place on the grass next to our driveway. I've gotten in the habit of parking nose-down because I was able to clear the front sunroof drains, but not the rear drains. This ensured I didn't have any sunroof leaks.

Last night it rained heavily. As I was leaving for Portland this morning, I decided to pull the 900 in to the garage so I could see whether the power steering fluid was leaking; there will be a puddle on the floor when I get home if I haven't fixed the problem. In any case, when I opened the door of the car, I encountered this wet mess:

  click any photo to make it larger.

You can see that the front left corner of the sunroof opening has water dripping from its edge. It was dripping right on to the driver's seat. From there, it flowed frontward to the driver's footwell, and rearward to the left-rear passenger footwell. It also splashed, wetting the pedals, knee bolster, and console housing the ignition key and light and window switches. You can see the headliner is wet both on the sunroof and the ceiling, it is saturated where the driver's visor was pressed up against it. Yuck!

There was between one and two inches of rain standing in the driver's footwell. I ran inside, got a towel, and dried off the seat, then the console, and started the car. The whole time, water was dripping onto my left leg from the sunroof opening. The car fortunately did start and run properly. I backed it in to the garage, and opened the sunroof and windows. Then I started fretting.

 Water, water everywhere.

I was suposed to be leaving for Portland. Right now. Instead, I decided I needed to take care of this problem. I removed the trim pieces that hold the carpet in place at the dor opening, and lifted. Water was pooled in the front footwell, soaked up by a PVC-backed foam-rubber pad. I knew that to dry this properly, I needed to lift the carpet up. It is held in by the front seat, so I dug out my tools and pulled out the driver seat. Then I lifted the front and rear carpets and determiend that the pads could come out if the rear-seat heat ducts were removed... and the center console was removed. Since I'd had the console out in January, I knew that 6 screws and one bolt were all I needed. So I got to work.

After I got in there, I was able to actually remove the carpet pad without removing the carpet. Good thing, as the front carpet is one piece that goes all the way under the console and is attached under the passenger side seat as well. Ditto the rear carpet, which requires rear seat removal as well for removal. Crazy. I guess they didn't want to take a chance on the carpet bunching up or something. I pulled out the pads and set them outside of the car to dry.

Those pads are actually pretty clever. If you spilled a drink, for example, on the carpet, the PVC backing would prevent the drink from soaking into the pad, it would only be in the carpet. However, in the case of the roof leaking and those pads becoming saturated, it would take approximately an entire summer for the pads to dry. So I'm glad I was able to remove them. When I did, I saw the telltale black stains of mildew past, as though this has happened before.

With all of that removal done, I toweled out the footwells and tried to soak up the water from the carpets. It was far from a perfect job. Then I put some plastic objects (broom handle, funnel) under the carpets to let air circulate around them. And that's how it sits.

Hopefully it will all be able to dry by the time I get home on Thursday, or at least by the weekend. Then I get to unclog the sunroof drain again. I'll bet that it is full of pine needles and dirt, the same kind of stuff that blows into the car from the sunroof track whenever I opened the roof in the summer. After that, the car will be parked with its car cover in place.

If the carpets dry without mildewing, then they'll recover OK. My worry is that the headliner and sunroof liner will be permanently stained and will sag more than they have. I'd like to get around recovering the headliner if I can. I'll have to see what it looks like when it dries.

I was pretty pleased with my performance, 6^th of 9 participants. Before running, I thought a realistic lap time for my car would be 54 or 55 seconds; but my best laps ended being around 51-52 seconds. My first lap ended up being my best since it was clean… a late call of a missed gate on my last run was surprising (I don’t recall missing a gate). I had a great time, and that may be the most important thing of all. You can check out the results here.

 

As long as I’m going to the trouble of uploading photos, I may as well talk about the new windshield I got in the 900 a few weeks ago. It got a rock chip last month when Erik was driving it, and it quickly spread to a crack, right in front of the steering wheel. My deductible for glass replacement was $100, which was fine. The original glass from 1992 was the one we replaced, and over the course of the last 14 years the very upright glass had become very pitted from stone chips. You can see in the photos how scarred the glass was; it was actually pretty difficult to see out when the sun was low in the sky, as every one of those pits catches the sunlight and keeps me from seeing out. Click on the photos for a bigger view.

The Northwest Datsun Enthusiasts hosted 'Clothing Optional', their WWSCC autocross event, on Sunday 8/27. The 900 and I were in attendance, for our first competetive outing in over a month.  We didn't show well.

My best time was returned on my first lap, which was clean. No subsequent lap was faster. Ouch. Especially ouch since I felt like my first run was slow. Zane's comment was that I should go to practice. I tend to agree.

I've spent the past 1.5 weeks thinking that I had come in last place, since I knew who most of my competitors were in the ST1 class. However the results posted last night, and I discovered that an unsuspecting 1994 Miata driver happened to do worse than me, so I placed 9th out of 10. The goal of "not last place" was met, though barely. I was quite disappointed with where I finished, for my first time all season.

At the event, I was surprised to see a maroon Plymouth Acclaim in front of me. My grandparents owned two of these vehicles, and while serving as reliable transportation neither one was a lively driver. The gentleman who drove it was middle age, and his elderly father was there to cheer him on. The Acclaim was equipped with the 4-cyl and 5-speed manual transmission; he finished 9th of 15 in the AM novice group. His best run wasn't as fast as my best run. So I totally kicked his ass. However, I have little to brag about.

This Sunday is BEAC Enduro. It's run a bit differently, with a single run of 3 laps plus a practice lap, and it's not recommended for novices. Sounds like fun to me. Hopefully I'll be more on top of my driving.

Two maintenance items to look for on upcoming posts: The 900's windshield was replaced last Thursday (it's miraculously clear), and the low-pressure return hose on the power steering (from the rack to the reservoir) has developed a pretty persistent leak. It's a known issue on the cars, and the hose can be replaced to fix the messy problem. The fix is even messier than the leak. I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm hating the spots in the driveway so it's a necessary repair. I'm hoping it holds out for the rest of the month so I can complete the last two events with functional power steering.