This shit box has been back in daily driver service for a while now. Partially to break it back into use and partially because the Saab started to be a liability.
I haven't really done much to it. It's still not running as smoothly as I'd like, the rotor arm has been wedged in place and seemingly the currently available ones are just a shit fit unless I can find a NOS Lucas/Hitachi example. The exhaust is also blowing which makes a fair difference to the running on this engine as well.
It was pissing in water through door seals and the C pillar air vents so I pulled the interior out until I'd got that sorted. While everything was out I decided to throw in some closed cell foam sound/heat insulation.
It is so much nicer with the interior in. No idea if the foam has made any difference at all really but hey ho.
Had to utilise my engineering expertise to remove the bonnet pull mount, it's not stupid if it works...
The paint on the rear bumper had also reacted with the primer and looked awful, so I gave that a quick sand and repaint.
I then went to refit the fog lights and fucking dropped one.
The shit moment got shitter when I looked them up on eBay and found out they are about £100 each second hand. Bastard. Even the lenses seem to fetch £60 odd and given my backing plates are pretty crusty I didn't want to shell out that sort of money on something that'd rot through in 5 years anyway. Then a chap I know on another forum pointed me in the direction of some £30 clones...
Fucking close enough. Yellow tint on the CIBIE is a proof of concept using heat shrink wrap. Not sure if to commit to yellow fogs, it's a bit SCENE and may be a slippery slope towards BBS alloys, a wing made of stickers and a roofrack with a rusty tricycle on it....
Oh, the windscreen also cracked at some point while it was being welded.
This is going to be a paint as I can't find a stockists for window rubbers and Acclaim windscreens don't grow on trees. Not really surprising it cracked, it was rusty as buggery and jacked up repeatedly at all four corners...
I also found the trim tape has adhered really well to the car and exceptionally poorly to the plastic..
It also blew it's main fuse for reasons unknown. I replaced it on the fly with a hex key, because I love fire. The correct 55amp fuses arrived yesterday so I'll fit one and see if it immediately melts again...
Other than that it's going well. With the minor caveat that several months after painting and many days of 15+C weather and UV exposure the paint is still soft as butter and is likely never going to harden. The bloke who painted it usually uses base and clear rather than this single stage gloss stuff and was unimpressed with it's performance to start with.
Even when mixed in consistent quantities it varies in colour slightly, the roof and boot lid are a shade lighter than the rest of the car. He tried spraying the fuel cap on it's own multiple times and it never matched the rest of the car... It also isn't handy for blending in new paint where there might need to be rectification or future rust repairs.
His thoughts are that it's due to it being an commercial grade paint, presumably designed to be mixed in huge quantities, sprayed and then immediately baked. If it ends up being done again we'll go for base and clear.
Still a bonny looking wee car though, I even did a smol car meet!