I’m not much of a fan of minilite-style wheels on 900s, so I got hold of some freshly refurbed Super Incas from JamSaab along with super rare locking centre caps. Had some Uniroyal Rain Expert 3’s fitted, and on they went. Annoyingly, the centre caps don’t actually fit – they’re about 1mm too big for the hole. It might just be the thickness of the paint, but I’m not too keen to file them down so they’re staying off for now.
Before
And after
Also – what’s this? A genuine Saab whale tail? I’m still in two minds about it – I think they look great on later slope front cars but I’m not so sure about flat fronts like Helga. I’ll leave it a while before fitting.
Found since getting Helga back on the road that she was misfiring under boost. At some point I’d taken the distributer off and lost the timing. Simple to sort normally, but what made things more confusing is that the timing marks have been machined off due to the flywheel being lightened. There were three lines of paint but no indication of which one was TDC. Eventually sussed it with the old screwdriver down the #1 plug hole trick. It was the yellow line!
She’s running great now, though one potential issue I spotted is that pressurising the vac capsule to around 15psi only retards the timing three degrees, whereas I thought stock it should be more like six, so from 16 to 10 degrees. Currently it only goes back to 13, which I think might be causing the boost to be slightly erratic in how far it will go. This is the opposite of what I was expecting because I was told when I bought the car that the distributer had been modified to retard further on boost, so the off-boost timing could be advanced more than stock.
In the middle of all this the bonnet cable snapped at the end that attaches to the pull, so for now that’s been replaced with some mole grips.
While I was diagnosing the misfire I did a compression check, the results seem good enough so the head gasket swap can wait. I’ll end up doing it eventually because I’d like to replace the timing chain and tensioners, plus I’ve got an uncracked exhaust manifold ready to fit. Of course that’s not necessarily a head off job but I’ll bet at least one of the studs will shear.
Progress on Helga since the last post on repairing the outer arches has been a bit slow, but she’s back on the road. The front inner arches have been repaired, etch primered, seam sealered and schutzed.
More filler on the front wings, and a coat of filler primer. That’ll keep it protected until it gets warmer when we can address the paintwork properly.
Naturally I then took the interior out. The carpets were sodden, looks like water has been getting in behind the pedals past where the cabin air intake thingy meets the bulkhead. Fixed the missing vacuum line for the heater controls and put the interior back minus the carpets for now until I’m happy the leak is fixed.
And home! Looking very scrappy but she made it no problems.
She was struggling to start after being stood so I’ve fitted a new Varta D24 for good measure. I’m really pleased that the new temp sensors seem to have done the trick, she starts almost instantly and idles perfectly now.
Had a spare full interior for Helga in really good condition, apart from the stitching was coming apart on the driver’s side base so I spent a little time stitching it back up. I’ll save it ’till the outside is tidied so she feels like a new car.
Remove the cover, stitch up…
And back together
For a bit of fun I drew up the missing 16v badge for the bootlid. Not delighted with the print quality but it looks okay painted.
Time to replace the front arches on Helga – once I started poking at the bubbles it was clear they needed replacing. Luckily Saabits offer weld-in replacement sections, and I’ve got a friend with a welder.
Both sides looking pretty sorryCut out the old
It’s not technically possible to get the front arches as repair panels – the trick is to buy rear ones but swap left to right. Still, I’m not sure why the curve of the new arch was quite a bit smaller radius than the arch we cut off because I’d read they’re supposed to be the same.
With the front edge of the left side lined up…
and tacked in…
the back edge is too short.
So a filler piece was needed. I cut the repair panel a bit short.
Lots of small tacks to avoid distortion…
Another patch under the washer bottle…
Ground back…
Primer…
And a skim of filler
While my mate Rich was doing the welding I fitted a new water pump, thermostat, ECU temp sender and fan temp switch along with fresh red antifreeze. I’d already done the gauge temp sender and the radiator looks pretty new so that’s all of the cooling system overhauled. The old pump was binding at certain points and it was weeping slightly because the mounting face hadn’t been cleaned up properly last time. Hoping the temp sender helps the wonky running and the others are just for luck but it should all go towards better reliability once she’s back on the road.
Every year we go to the Oulton Park Gold Cup, and this year was Helga’s turn. Had a very eventful journey, blew off a boost hose early on and that started a cycle of constant stops to refit it. I think it must have blown off a dozen times. Got so fed up that I disconnected the APC valve to drop to base boost but the pipework is a bit stretched and doesn’t have swaged ends, and disturbing it once seemed to start the cycle.
Grabbed a couple of Mikalor clamps from the track shop to try to hold the pipes together a bit better which was working great on the way home until I went for a full bore overtake of a corsa, and as I drew level, -pssst!-. This time it was at the other end of the offending pipe. Much easier to put back though because it wasn’t underneath the washer bottle. To effect a proper fix I just need to find a longer silicone jointer that is stepped because one pipe is ~56mm and the other is 51mm, plus there’s very little overlap of jointer into pipe and the pipe isn’t swaged.
As I stopped at the next junction I came to after putting the pipe back, a cloud of white smoke plumed from under the bonnet. The distributer chose that moment to blow its seal and wee oil onto the turbo heat shield. I’ve got a couple of other spare distributers but from later cars, so I’ll have to work out if they’re compatible.
