1991 Saab 900S

[thooms]

Right.

Figured I should make some kind of thread about my finally working Swedish device.

I've had this for a shade over three years now, for more than half of which it has been off the road. Nice. It's the first car I've really waded into pulling stuff apart on, so has been a steep learning curve - it was a little tired / crusty / leaky when I got it, but still did a few few k happy miles in it. Eventually I faced the old 'scrap it or by a welder' decision - I took the latter option, and embarked on a 'few' months of lying on the drive, burning myself and setting fire to my hair.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks back and I managed to get it all cable tied / taped back together to get it through its MOT (with no advisories, outrageous!). Great success.

I've got a build thread that I started before I found this marvellous place - there's not a lot in it because I'm pretty clueless and spend a lot of time drinking tea and thinking 'WTF am I going to do about that?!', but it's here if you fancy having a gander...

Bodge thread on UKSaabs

Naturally, we all like pictures - which is annoying as the only ones I have of it are while it's still terracotta, rather than red. I'll get some more of it over the next few days

Most of it is standard or OEM+ a bit, there's nothing super ridiculous going on with it at the moment. I'm planning to use it as a daily - but it's got a cracked cam cover at the moment which drips oil onto the manifold occasionally. Makes sitting in traffic a little unpleasant Nothing huge in the pipeline for the now - just get some easy miles on it, and put the rest of the interior back in as half of it's in the shed at the moment.

That's all for now - pictures to follow!

[breadvan]

tasty sweede

[thooms]

Armed with pictures, I'll give you a condensed version of the story so far...

The motivations for this were 3 fold - it was rusty but saveable in a fair few places - everything in the engine bay leaked (crankshaft, dizzy, gearbox, rack...) - it had majorly got under my skin.

Soooo...engine out for some love (new crankshaft seal and timing chain, was the plan...)





Mmmm-mmmmm. Began stripping down ye olde engine...



...hmm. Languishing with a head gasket failure back in the day? Decided I couldn't put it back together having seen that and it was way too deep to hone out, so decided to find another block. Found a nice one, and stuck a head off a B234 from a 9000 on there, which flows a bit better. Which is nice. More on this later.

There was corrosion in every wheel well due to their wise decision to poke self tappers through the metal.



Yay!



I don't have any more welding-type photos I'm afraid. I suck at taking pictures while I'm doing stuff

Tidied up the front end...





New engine + new paint...



In addition to making a mess outside, I'd been making things. For the uninitiated, a rather handy swap you can do with these engines is graft the Trionic 5 engine management system from a 9000 / ng900 onto the car - opening up all sorts of glorious opportunities for mapping fuel, boost, ignition etc. It's also more efficient because of more sophisticated control over injection, insanely sensitive knock detection / surpression, that sort of thing. It's mappable using free software too.

AND, you can lose your leaky distributor. It's pretty glorious - so I've fitted that - mostly very easy, except you need to add a crank position sensor and build a loom. I fabbed a bracket, did loads of soldering, and welded the trigger wheel onto the my un-used aircon compressor pulley. Wouldn't want to do it with the engine in the car, there ain't much space!





It lives!



Elsewhere, I had three different types of shocks on the car, along with some rather worn ball joints. I'd fitted a recon steering rack, so went with new trackrod ends, wishbone bushes, obligatory lowering springs and ARB mounts. Shiny things!



Did some other random things, too. Front reversing lights retrofitted (MOT man was rather confused by these )



Been working on getting everything back together over the last few weeks. Was worth it in the end



So. Here we are. Back to rolling project, rather than axle-standed drive ornament. Ahh, how I missed thee, chariot of justice!

[thooms]

So, now 550 miles in and the engine hasn't fallen apart, some pictures of the car as it is today...







Lump w/ Trionic 5.5...I'm using the cam cover from a 9k at the moment - I got the original one powder coated satin black and looking beautiful - but the company that did it thoughtfully sandblasted the inside so it's an expensive paperweight now





That photo reminds me that I need to get the intercooler back in. I'm still running it as an LPT - about 4psi - so the turbo isn't working that hard. The I/C was out for cleaning - had hoped to fit it in time for the gathering for a thrash up the hill but didn't get round to it. Thought hillclimb without intercooler seemed a bit harsh on the old thing so didn't bother

Even after all this time, the novelty of the bonnet still hasn't worn off.



I've got some tasty bits to fit like a T3-flanged TD04-15T and a FMIC, which should allow for some real boosty, gearbox-trashing silliness with the Trionic management - but I'll give the engine more time before flogging it that hard. The back of the car could do with some love, and I'd like to refresh the suspension in the same way as I have the front (and fit the ruddy springs that I still haven't got round to - note how much higher it is at the back!). For now though, I'm just loving having it back in one piece.

So yeah. There you have it

[madwelshman]

Yay, another classic Saab on here and a very nice one at that.
She looks really nice, you've done a great job.

Will :-)

[thooms]

Crumbs. Lots has happened since I last updated this. Since the rebuild I've done about 2500 miles in it - no beats have been missed.

Really enjoyed having it back, and the constant fear of explosive disassembly was starting to subside.

Haven't done much to it really - a couple of oil changes, a stopping a few leaks, general fiddling. Also bought a new radiator because the old one was hanging.



Notice added intercooler in there, too!

You may notice some of that was in the past tense - on the 21st of November I had the shock of me life when I went outside and the bloody thing had vanished

It had been stolen by fiends - rub-bish. Luckily, a few hours later, I got a phone call from the po-lice saying that it had been found, hotwired and doused in petrol. Crucially however, not ignited. A lucky escape, if ever there was one!

At the time of writing I haven't actually been to see it yet, as the recovery firm don't like doing stuff at the weekends. I'll take Monday off work and see what the damage is, and start gathering bits for the re-resurrection.

Pictures and grizzly details to follow!

[madwelshman]

O.M.G!! I bet gutted doesn't begin to describe how you must feel. So sorry to hear that.
I'm guessing they must have forced it out of reverse and broken the lock.
I really hope it's not too bad mate.

[120y]

dirty thieving scum, cut there damn fingers off.

[Dr.AK]

Oh boy, that sucks abotu it being stolen! I hope the damage's not too big!

Always liked these Saabs...

[skoda_norman]

That is a lovely looking Saab. I hope you can get it back to its former glory following the theft.

[fordmartin]

bad ass saab

[qwerty]

Lovely car, what a kick in the teeth it getting stolen must have been. Hope you get it all sorted soon.