So, unfortunately, I don't really have any pictures worth sharing, but the car is back home with me, and it now has nearly 350 miles on the new transmission.
When I went back up to my parents place two weekends ago, the goal was to get the driveshaft installed, the interior buttoned up, the engine running, and the brakes/clutch working properly.
Saturday was moderately successful, getting the interior together, the driveshaft in, and some fluids into everything so it could be started.
I did start it with open headers on Saturday:
but I didn't have enough coolant on hand to fill the system, so I could not run it for long.
Later that evening, after I had picked up some more coolant, I was able to run the engine long enough that I could hear a banshee like scream coming from something. With the open headers though, I was unable to identify the source.
Sunday, my dad and I installed the exhaust so that I could hear myself think, and we identified the source of the noise to be a failing bearing in the alternator.
My local autozone ?which is who the warranty was through did not have one on hand, and we had to drive all the way up to SLC to get one.
The new alt didn't squeal, which was good... but it also didn't charge.
After returning the Duralast crap, we visited Advance Auto, who was the only game in the entirety of Utah Valley that had a new or re-manufactured one on hand.
Of course, that didn't charge either.
By this point, we were approaching the end of my time in Spanish Fork, and I had to return back to Cedar for the week.
We had successfully gotten the driveshaft in, and the clutch was working. The interior was together, and the engine was running.
The brakes only had a quick, 20 minute bleed job done, and were only barely, just adequate, with what felt like a considerable amount of air in the lines, but with some pumping, they were good enough to stop the car, and really, the issue was totally contained within the rear brakes, the fronts were working fine.
SO, I went on a very, very short test drive around the block.
it was glorious.
Then, last weekend, I went north again, for the 5th weekend in a row. I was getting very tired of driving the Saab 400 miles every weekend, and I had decided that come hell or high water, I was GOING to be bringing the Fairlane back to Cedar with me.
I had a junkyard fresh alternator from a 96 Taurus that appeared to have met a creature-based end:
and a plan to use a vacuum pump to bleed the brakes, and cycle quite a volume of fluid through the lines, ensuring a good bleed.
The junkyard alt fixed the charging issue perfectly, working on first fire of the engine, and my dad and I ended up spending the rest of Saturday working on the brakes.
Sadly, the brakes did not bleed as well as they should have.
The vacuum pump was sucking quite a lot of air through the threads of the bleeder nipples, and at one point, we screwed up and sucked the master cylinder dry, necessitating a bench bleed.
We verified that the brake lines from the master to the rear axle were clear of obstructions by blowing it empty, and then sucking fresh fluid through the whole line before re-attaching things, but still no joy.
The pedal is still behaving like there is air in the rear lines.
On the first press, the pedal goes down to a point where the tandem master cylinder starts to do it's job, and is engaging only the front brakes. It hits the pressure of the front brakes so hard that it feels like its bottoming out the cylinder (its not, as evidenced by the pedal depressing an additional inch or two of travel when bleeding the front brakes, to truly bottom out the master)
At this point, after a single press, the front brakes are locked pretty good, but the rears are barely dragging.
If I pump up the pedal a bit, then the feel comes back good, and the rears lock just as hard as the fronts.
After all our efforts on Saturday, we were able to improve the brakes quite a bit, but they still are not good enough.
Now, instead of requiring 10+ pumps to get the rear brakes to do anything, it only takes two, but two, is too many.
Still, I wasn't going to drive the Saab back.
Even with the marginal brakes (really, they are still pretty good, just not up to my, or anyone elses standards) I still drove the car home.
And I love it.
There's a little bit of vibration, but the frequency is not right for a driveshaft vibe, and I think it's the tires. They were shaking a bit before the swap too, so there's no change really.
First gear is strong as hell. I've still not exceeded about 85% throttle, and its still got a hell of a shove.
6th is cruising at a sweet 2400 rpm at 80, and I love the gear spacing.
Fuel economy of the first drive was not greatly improved, only returning 19 mpg (I estimate that given the load and environment conditions, I probably would have seen about 17 mpg before)
but, both the trans, and the bearings of the engine were still breaking in, so perhaps further improvement can be expected.
Or maybe not, 80 mph is not slow, and the car is aerodynamically about as good as a brick.
I suspect that 2000 rpm at 65 will be somewhat better mpg, but honestly, I don't really even care.
I didn't do the swap for mpg, I did it for driving enjoyment, and on that front, I couldn't be happier.
There is something of a grinding noise on left turns under certain conditions, which I strongly suspect is the axle pinion/u-joint contacting the exhaust, which I'll have to fix.
I also do not have a parking brake at the moment, and the hole in the floor is covered by plastic and carpet, rather than metal, so I need to deal with that too.
The most pressing issue is the brakes.
I am going to rig up a pressure bleed system next weekend as a last-ditch attempt before I can admit that maybe the master cylinder is just not the right size for the application now that its disk/disk.