She Looks Like a Car Again!

With the bulkhead cover on, the roll-bar bolted in, the doors aligned and bolted in there was nothing stopping the rear body from going on. With help from two of my friends we ever so carefully slide the back body back on the car.

As we were snugging everything up I realized that I had put the windshield wiper spindles on backwards. The way I had them would force the spindle gear housing to be visible through the windshield, well if they hadn't been so flush to the body that the windshield could have been install. So with the other two gently holding the front area up I took apart the spindles and re-threaded them the correct way.

At this point I had been working with minimal stops for 6+ hours and it was past midnight. There needs to be sealer put all around the body so water, dirt, and debris doesn't get between the fiberglass and the chassis. So that will be done at a later time and the body bolted and riveted on more permanently.

This is the most satisfying picture I've taken yet. Nothing like stepping back and it no longer looks like a monocoque sand-rail... she looks like a car.

If you need the steps to put the body back on you can use the guide to take it off from VSAAB, but obviously in reverse. http://www.vsaab.com/html/Articles/sonettbody.htm

Bulkhead Cover, Roll-bar, Seatbelts

I took the bulkhead cover -that goes over the gas tank and swiss-cheese panel- and had my grandmother (who has an upholstery machine, which kicks ass) sew on some strips of heavy-duty Velcro so that I didn't have to glue it down. That way should I even need to get into those brake lines, fuel lines, or the gas-tank I don't have to deal with glue.

For some reason this cover must have been recreated (rather closely actually) based on an original but had no holes for bolting on seat-belts or the roll-bar so I carefully cut some. With that done it was simply a matter of bolting on the seat-belt hardware and the freshly painted roll-bar.

Doors On

One of my fathers coworkers recreated my rotted door-gutters in 1/8" stainless steel from scrap they had laying around, so when I got them they just needed to have holes drilled to fit in the doors. Well if you didn't know stainless steel isn't easy to drill through. After burning through 5-6 bits I got all the holes drilled, painted them with the same enamel/ceramic mix I used on the trunk pan.

for those of you who don't know: all metal work should be done barefoot/flip-flops. It's the only way to do it. Don't believe me? Check out the editor of Hot-Rod magazine...

Once the paint had dried it was simply screwing them into their spots on the door sills.

With the headliner done, the door sills painted, and the new rain gutters bent, cut and drilled, there was nothing stopping the doors from going on. So that seemed like the thing to do. First I taped all the edges up with painters tape so any unintentional metal on metal contact wouldn't remove paint. I used some spare headliner as padding during the fitting process as well.

Lined the hinges up in their slots and hammered the pins through. Then it was just a matter of adjusting the door's position by tightening or loosening the 24mm nuts on each hinge. Once they were moving in and out freely without hitting anything I removed the padding  (left the tape for now).

The next step is putting the stopping hardware back together so that the doors only open as much as they're supposed to. If you don't install this stuff right the doors will open too far and go straight through the fiberglass skins, not good. I didn't have any of this hardware except a single shim to use as a guide for the other one. So I created a new shim for the passenger door and made a pair of tiny pins by shortening a bolt and grinding the top of it down. Now I've just gotta figure out how to imitate the rubber stoppers on the other side...

That little bugger

Headliner

I knew I needed new headliner but instead of going with the stock foam backed vinyl headliner I went with the more modern automotive headliner you can buy at most fabric stores. Partly because it's supposed to be easier to install and partly because it actually serves as a sound deaden-er and insulator.

So I set the back body down on a bunch of blankets to protect the paint upside down. I tried brushing on the 3M glue I bought. This is not the rattle-can stuff you get at automotive stores, it's "3M Scotch-Grip High Performance Contact Adhesive 1357"  which comes in a paint style can. This stuff is a gnarly green and smells like, well glue, but it seems really strong. Supposedly everywhere I read recommendations were talking about a yellow 3M glue for headliners and that's not what I ended up with. It seemed to work but I would try to find that stuff instead if you can.

I tried to brush it on at first but this stuff gets tacky so fast when exposed to the air that the brush starts clumping it on way to thick. Then it shows through the brown headliner I've chosen. So I went to Harbor Freight and bought a cheap little 15$ spray gun, dumped the glue in and and sprayed it like that.

The trick is to spray the surface, use some kind of spacer, like cardboard stripes of wood dowels, and make sure the headliner can go over that whole area without bunching up or adjustment. If not, adjust, if it fits you fold it back spray more glue directly on the foam backing then slowly stick the glue side to the surface. Pull the material tight as you press it down, it helps to have somebody hold tension while you press the glued surfaces together.

Mine didn't come out perfect because it's the first time I've ever done it, I was by myself, and my spacers were crap. That being said it still looks good, and is a hell of a lot better than the raw fiberglass.

After it had dried for a day I poked holes into the correct spots and screwed in the rear-view mirror and sun visor.

Trunk Pan Finished

So my last post showed the trunk pan mostly welded in but before I could get all the seams finished and be comfortable with it really being structurally in the car the welder I was using crapped out.

Well I thought it crapped out, turns out it was just out of wire... Awkward. Guess that's what happens when you're using tools you're not familiar with.

So the pan was all welded in so I ground down the beads of the welds so they weren't quite as obvious and sat flush to the pan. Then I had to prime it so the steel didn't rust. Just in the few days the pan sat in the it started to flash surface rust, so I wire-brushed all that off and primed it.

Then I had to deciede if I just wanted to repaint it black or cover it with FatMat. I opted to kind of do both. I FatMat'd around the sides but not the pan itself since the bends and welds there were so pretty. I used engine enamel with ceramic to paint the pan and was actually so pleased with it I repainted the gas tank while I was at it.

So now I have a trunk pan I can jump in and not go through the floor. Now to get a battery tray so it stays that way...

New Trunk Pan

I finally caved bought the $300 weld-in kit from Ashcraft, After calling every metal shop within 100 miles and nobody said they could/would do it. I just don't think they thought a 20 year old college student was serious about fabricating a trunk pan for some weird Swedish car more than twice his own age. Well I was serious and you lost some pretty easy business, it's just putting corrugated bends in 1/8" thick steel with a metal brake!

Ashcraft's kit does require a little bit of customization to get it to fit perfectly, IE putting the ridges in the L-brackets that support the pan. I also found that my side L pieces and the pan itself were about 1 1/4" too long. I cut the excess off and they snugged right in.

This is literally the second or third time I've ever MIG welded in my entire life. Not bad if  I do say so myself.

All the L's beating roughly into shap and welded in. This was dirty, hot, exhausting work and my forearm was sore for days from all the hammering.

Pan is welded in all along the top. Was in the process of doing all the seams underneath to add even more support and reduce places for water to seep in when I ran out of wire. Once I get more I'll finish up these under seams, grind the bead off my weld, prime, paint and the trunk is done.

Last Few Electical Gremlins

Even after completely redoing the whole wiring harness for my car there were a few issues:

1. The "Charge" light on the combination gauge would come on the moment a battery was connected, it should only come on if the alternator stops producing the proper amount of voltage.
2. Brake Light sensor isn't transmitting signal properly when the brakes are on.
3. Tachometer isn't working at all and is missing all of it's internal light bulbs.
4. Fuel level sensor isn't properly sending signal
5. Oil Pressure sensor isn't properly sending signal
6. Water temperature isn't properly sending signal

So lets start delving into the issues and how I've gone about fixing them, those that are fixed.

#1 Upon further inspection of the wiring diagram wires got crossed and the wire to the light was not on the correct terminal, once it was moved and re spliced correctly battery is connected and the light doesn't come on.

#2 Brake light sensor assembly works by depressing a small diaphragm inside the screw in to transfer signal from the live wire that comes in to the wire that's attached to the brake lights. The multi-meter says it's not transferring that signal, so chances are that a new one will have to be sourced from the junkyard.

#3 I had to contact Ashcraft about this one because the previous owner had installed an MSD ignition control system, which obviously changes the way the primary circuit should be wired. According to the MSD documentation the lead to the Tachometer should come straight out of the MSD box, while the stock SAAB setup says it should go to the negative terminal of the ignition coil. Well the MSD box set-up wasn't working, and Ashcraft said that the way the VDO tach works is based off a deflection of the 12v signal coming in based off the grounding in the ignition coil. He went on to say that if the wire to terminal 1 of the tach was connected to a wire with a voltage it risks frying the tach PERMANENTLY. So with that concerning me greatly I switched back over to the stock setup. 

First impression was that the Tach isn't fried. It did react to reving and finally moved from 0 when the car started up. However the revs idle at 600, and never exceeded 2000, even when I revved the nuts off the thing. So something isn't reading correctly. So back to Ashcraft I crawled; he suggested switching to a stock style Bosch Blue Type 12 ignition coil (Most commonly know in old Volkswagens) as that's what the VDO gauge is calibrated for. German gauge only read German ignition coil, I could have probably guessed that.

#4 This is still an issue, but may be due to a broken bullet connector in the VDO specific connector, so I'll need to replace the whole thing since you can't get replacement connectors and mine is broken. It's on the list for the next trip to Nine's junkyard. If that isn't the issue the problem lays on the sender side, but I'm really only concerned with getting the electrical issues that are easiest to fix with the body off at this point.

#5 New sending unit was purchased and installed. Suspect gauge isn't working now

#6 New sending unit was purchased and installed. Gauge is suspect.

"Black Hole" Blues

You may recall earlier in this blog that I removed the Clutch Master Cylinder to rebuild with a kit I bought in the mail. Well It was working fine, but randomly one day when I backed the car down the hill to turn it around to work on the passenger side it wouldn't slide back into gear. So after towing the car back into the garage we quickly diagnosed that the clutch slave cylinder was leaking fluid and not building pressure. So off it went to White Post. It came back, got re-installed, and the system was bled. After fully bleeding the system the pedal still would go halfway to the floor with no pressure, not good. So I figure the clutch master is now the issue, chances are the $17 kit from china probably isn't the best. So the master has to come out again.

Most automotive companies when it comes to designing hydraulic brake and clutch control system aim for simplicity and ease of maintenance, at least they did once upon a time. For example check out the location here in a CJ-5, it's so easy to get to, and the reservoir is right on top of the cylinder.

SAAB however, as usual threw convention to the wind and mounted their cylinders way down out of reach, because they know better. The master cylinders -both Clutch Control and Brake- in the Sonett are mounted right behind the pedals on the engine side of the firewall, down behind the trans-axle, beside the transmission, underneath the steering rack. The fact that I have to list 3 things that they're near should be a giveaway how impossibly difficult it is to get to the cylinders, never mind getting tools on them. This area is affectionately known among Sonett owners as the "Black Hole" as you put hands, tools, screws bolts, and anything else down there and they don't come back.

Since this is such a common issue Ashcraft sells an access door that allows you to cut a hole in the frame there to get tools on the cylinders but doesn't compromise frame rigidity. So I bought one of those, but it's a custom built part and he didn't have one ready in stock. So I got the instructions and cut the hole so I could go on and get the cylinder out and send it off.

So with the cylinder out off it goes to White Post to get rebuilt. Hopefully after it will let the car go back into gear and then mechanically the car is done.