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FWIW my pal's 96 was definitely a V4
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Some great tech talk, I know very little about earlier Saabs so happy for people to discuss here.
This has to be my new favourite upgrade, a not so easy to find accessory interior light delay relay. The interior now feels like a futuristic cabin for at least 10 seconds when I get in the car at night. Might try and wire in an inline capacitor so the light fades out for added sci-fi
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The Saab has been to the coast twice in the last month plus a trip to Bath and i developed some intermittent problems engaging certain gears (normally when trying to reverse park on a busy road...) and the exhaust was suddenly catching on speed bumps. A quick look underneath and i discovered a knackered gear linkage coupling and a broken rubber silencer mount. So as i already had a morning appointment on Saturday near Reading i kept heading west afterwards and squeezed in a couple hours work in the sunshine. Whilst i was under the car i also installed new exhaust clamps as there was a minor leak and stole a better washer pump motor from my dad's spares as mine was on it's way out. Also replaced the old worn out plugs which unsurprisingly has resulted in better running. Sadly run out of time to fit the new Aero springs on the back and sort the new bonnet gaps but i have the dent man booked in for the end of next month so i'll do them then.
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Great thread, glad I found it.
What kind of power do these make?
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I like the 2-tone front end. What's the vintage machine also in the garage?
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Cheers. Top of the range model turbo's put out 175bhp at the wheels. The special edition Carlsson and Ruby have 185bhp thanks to a modified APC unit. Mine should put out 175bhp but i'm booking in a dyno session as i suspect it's lost some power over the years. If i can find the upgraded APC unit i'll up it to 185 but as gearboxes are a weak point i'm not interested in making this quicker. It's pretty uneventful at slower speeds which suits me nicely but it still has a healthy amount of mid range punch on the open road.
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I like the 2-tone front end
Yeah the original paint is all over the shop so the two tone actually works really well.
What's the vintage machine also in the garage?
My dad's Bentley special. He was in tech college in Bristol in the late 60's and found it in a lock-up in St Pauls, from memory paid about £80. Original body was toast so he's shortened the chassis, hand built the timber tub and covered it in fabric as specials were done at the time. I think build receipts spanning over 50 years still don't total £2k.
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Finally got the dent puller in and what a difference it's made. £150 got me 2 nasty dents out of the passenger door, 1 dent out of the drivers door, rear tailgate dent sorted and the mangled rear quarter has been straightened significantly so the arch can be nibbled out not and a new section let in.
With the new rust free bonnet and dents pulled it's not far off being ready for paint but i'll be waiting on Khan's decision on ULEZ before thinking about it more seriously.
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My dad's Bentley special
so cool
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After a long time looking i finally settled on a new headunit for the Saab. The existing Kenwood sounded great and had rear USB fed into the glovebox but it didn't have DAB. I considered Continental/VDO for looks but after speaking with one of their main distributors i was told they wouldn't compete in sound quality with the Kenwood. So i've stuck with Kenwood, it sacrifices the rear USB but has DAB plus Spotify control (although Spotify are stopping support for this) and Alexa voice activation. It also does away with the chrome and has a nice firm feel to all the controls. It comes with a fairly horrible screen mounted aerial which i may still need to use but for now i've gone with a Eightwood aerial splitter. In theory it should let me use the existing pop up aerial without the need for the Kenwood stick on job.
I've done a quick install today and surprisingly the splitter actually works however i couldn't find 6 music plus a few others that i'll want. Tomorrow i'll get the bluetooth setup and see if i can actually get proper Spotify access and control through the headunit (picking playlists etc).
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Been meaning to update this for a while now but uncertainty about keeping the car have lowered motivation over the last 9 months. At the end of the month the Saab will fall foul of the new ULEZ expansion and i'll have to pay £12.50 every time i use the car. I have mixed feelings about the scheme but there's never going to be a solution that works for everyone and i'm all for reducing the number of cars on the road and lowering pollution so it's not something i've got worked up about.
After going over and over the options my partner and i decided that keeping the car and limiting it's use to 1-2 times a month (pretty much what we do right now) was going to be the best option for us. Realistically the car will be for taking the dog for an early Sunday morning walk somewhere out of London or for occasional trips to the coast or the south west for a break. If we stick to that we're talking about £2-300 a year. A nice bonus to the decision was a really good haul of new service parts from an abandoned project car. I hadn't been on a Saab forum in years and someone 5 minutes up the road from me had just put up the add. For £200 i got roughly £700's worth of new spares (discs, calipers, pads, filters...) and used spares with plenty of value if i can be arsed to list it all separately.
So ownership and running costs are not going to be an immediate issue but ULEZ has made me look in more detail at performance and fuel economy. I've always wanted to put the car on a dyno so i booked the car into Lloyd specialist developments to see how it was running. Amazingly the car really hasn't lost much power over the years and the numbers indicate it's making near enough factory figures. I've always felt that despite being a performance car (in its day) it had decent fuel economy (easily 30mpg over big journeys). It turns out this was largely down to running lean and we agreed to keep it that way as i had no need or want for more power. Emissions wise all i have to go on is the MOT and once the loose exhaust clamp was tightened it sailed through it's last test. Not sure if that means much but the guys in the MOT centre seemed to suggest it ran pretty well even from cold start ups. Fuel wise the sliced bread podcast had some interesting stuff on which fuel to go for and whilst it's not entirely conclusive the additives in premium fuels for cleaner running seem to be worth paying more for.
The next thing to do then was a road trip to Cornwall to see how it performed. We decided to break up the trip with a short stop in Lyme Regis, before heading Newquay to pick up my board and then head onto Penzance and Lands End. On the way back we stopped off in Bath and the car absolutely nailed the entire trip. Bit tiring on the motorway but totally at home on the windy coastal roads.
What was really noticeable on the trip though was just how tired the car is looking these days. I kind of like the Boba Fett styling but it's now bordering on scruffy which doesn't spark joy. Whilst i was at Lloyd specialist they had some amazing restoration projects there so i called them up and they've pointed me in the direction of someone they use. Quote unquote "he's not cheap but fucking good". After dealing with grumpy unhelpful people in the car trade for years it was refreshing to get someone friendly and enthusiastic on the phone who was happy to talk. Long story short he's happy for me to take the car to him to discuss options to tidy it up and get this, he'll do a meeting on the weekend and can use his email. At a minimum i'd like him to let in the new rear wing section and colour match the bonnet but we'll see where the discussion goes. Current thoughts are spending somewhere between £2-£4k to tidy it up. £2k as that's what sat in the insurance pot, £4k as that's what i could probably stretch to and not loose very much if i decided to sell after a year or two.
Along with all the service parts i've also got the sports springs and a few other parts to fit. That'll keep me plenty busy whilst i decide what to do next.
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Great stuff, i love a road trip. Always lusted after 900 turbos.
Dibs if you decide to sell down the line 👌
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Project roll neck, Saab 900 turbo and the garage it doesn't fit in
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Honestly IDK - I'm going on what I read on a forum (not this one, but this is similar info):
The freewheel was a holdover from the earlier models of Saab (92, 93, 95, 96, and Sonett II) that were powered by 3-cylinder, 2-stroke engines. The original version of the 2-stroke engine was lubricated by oil mixed with the gasoline. Think what would happen without a freewheel: You'd come to the top of a hill, take your foot off the gas, and the car would roll down, with the engine providing braking just as you'd want it to do. BUT... with the throttle closed (foot off gas) and no gasoline going through the engine, there'd also be no OIL going through the engine, so it would get no lubrication and wear out very quickly. The freewheel was designed to prevent this: When you took your foot off the gas, the engine could drop back to idle speed while the car coasted freely. (The lockout knob was provided for special situations in which you HAD to have engine braking even though engine wear was increased -- steep mountain driving, for example.)
By the time Saab switched to a more sophisticated two-stroke engine with automatic oil injection, the freewheel technically was no longer necessary... and of course, the switch to the four-stroke V4 cemented the change. However, by then Saab owners had gotten used to having a freewheel, and Saab claimed (probably correctly) that it did improve gas mileage a bit (because the engine could idle while the car coasted.) The books also said freewheel let you upshift without using the clutch, although I always got pretty disturbing crunches when I tried it!
As to the original purpose of the Sonett, I do think Saab intended it as a serious sports car, not just a "commuter" car. It was based very closely on the 96 sedan, which had quite a sporting reputation in its day as an international-caliber rally car... so by substituting a lower, lighter, two-seater body, Saab was able to provide a more stylish car with more sporting performance, based on the same well-proven chassis. In principle the idea wasn't much different from the scads of British sports cars that were based on mundane sedan mechanicals.