At this point, the major work items to have the car safely on the road are complete. The car has been transformed from a derelict parts car to a running, driving functional vehicle. Unfortunately, I found myself terribly behind schedule at this point due to the extensive troubleshooting that had to be done on the electricals behind the gauge cluster. It was particularly frustrating to have the car in a such a position since my expectation was that I was going to have a fairly small amount of work to do to make the leap to “runner”.
Water under the bridge, though. It was time to start working on some of the odds-and-ends that needed to be done. The first problem to tackle was that the car would flood every single time it was shut down and it was getting terrible gas mileage. I suspected that there was an injector that might have been stuck open, but when we popped the vacuum line off of the fuel pressure regulator there was a significant quantity of fuel that came streaming out. Apparently, the diaphragm in the regulator can fail and it starts to spray fuel into the intake causing it to run rich and to bled off all the fuel pressure by dumping gas into the intake when you shut the car off.
The long term plan is to make a little bit of a tweak to the boost control computer – known as the APC – to allow it to boost a little higher, so this was a good opportunity to make sure there would be enough fuel to make that happen. eBay provided a 3.0 bar pressure regulator – the stock pressure is 2.5 bar – which should provide enough fuel for a couple more psi of boost pressure down the road.
The next issue that the car presented was the alignment. It tracks very straight and true, but the steering wheel is canted about 10 degrees to the right. I knew exactly how to solve this problem: I called Tim. Using a tape measure and some of those flat, rectangular curtain rods, Tim is an absolute genius at performing alignments. I didn’t want to mess with the camber at all, but the toe definitely needed some work and Tim got right to it.
By measuring the distance between the wheels in the front and the back, he was able to determine that there was a little more toe-in than the spec said it should have. Given the measurements that he took, the toe-in specification, and the thread pitch of the tie rod ends, Tim was able to determine that the right wheel needed to be adjusted about 3/4 to 1 turn of the tie rod. We made a slight error the first time around – forgetting that the Saab steers from the back of the wheel not the front – but once we overcame that, it was basically perfect. Just like that.
Turning our attention to some of the appearance items, we broke out the 303 Aerospace protectant and started wiping down the seats and the plastic trim. I had already given the leather seats some treatment with Murphy’s Oil Soap and used the carpet machine on the floor, but hitting the rest of the trim with the 303 made a huge difference in terms of getting the plastics looking shiny again. The dash is basically a lost cause with the amount of cracking that is there, but otherwise we’re trying to make it a nice place to spend some time.
Another trim item that needed to be addressed was the fabric inset on the door cards. It’s supposed to be wrapped around the panel and then glued to the back but that glue had deteriorated over time and the fabric was sort of flapping in the wind. It sounds kind of crazy, but that loose fabric really made the car look sloppy and junky.
With the panels off, we used a Gorilla spray adhesive to re-stick the fabric and then back on to the doors they went. All in all it was a very easy and fast task that really improved the look of the car.
The trim was peeling off of the glove box door as well, so Becca broke out a different Gorilla glue product and a clamp and got that secured. These few appearance things were so minor, but it really changed the character of the car. Just tidying up the trim on the car transformed it from kind of a beater to just an older car and made it a nicer place to sit.
In that same vein, we decided to tackle the seat belts. They are really slow to retract and wind up just sort of hanging about instead of going back where they belong. From what I could find in some internet research, you can take the cover off, give the spring some additional turns to tighten it up, and solve the problem. Easy, right?
For four hours we fought with getting the rear seat out, the side trim panels out, and then taking the seat belt retractor apart. The spring went flying, of course, and I spent a very long time getting it re-wound. In the end, I had it wound as tightly as I could get it. All that time and effort really paid off when I put it all back together and it was exactly the same as it was when I started. I’m assuming that the spring is just sprung.
The next thing we decided the car needed was a better entertainment system. For about a hundred bucks, I got a no-name single-DIN Android Auto / Apple CarPlay head unit and four Pyle speakers. The sound quality isn’t great, but it’s pretty amazing considering the price. It also means that any phone functions will be fully hands-free, so hopefully that will limit the temptation for young drivers to be fiddling with their phone while they drive. And, honestly, you can’t cruise down the highway in a convertible without being able to blast some music. Or, since it’s a Saab, I guess you have to blast NPR?