Parts Car

Since it's been ages since a post I will begin by apologizing to anyone reading this blog consistently, I've just been busy with school. Some Sonett work has been done, but not as much as previously and updating this space hasn't been high on the priority list.

Now onto some actual updates: since the old trans-axle was done I needed to source another one. I thought I was going to have to go to Nines and see if I could buy a used one off of him for an arm and a leg. Then like a gift from the automotive gods a 73' Sonett showed up on Craigslist right here in Apex, literally 15 minutes from my house... for $400. The poor car was (according to the gentleman I bought it from) driven daily for years by him and then his son until he went off to college, the car was parked out in the field and left there. For 10 years. The car was dirty, it had trees growing through it but there were good parts there; so I talked him down to $300 and pulled it out of field.

as it sat in the field, literally with the forest growing up around it

it took a tractor and a winch to remove the car from the trees and get it up onto the trailer since the tires were basically nonexistent

A good sign. These guys do good work, they're actually still in business in Durham. This sticker was a large part of the reason I felt the car was taken care of.

Tires may have been gone but the soccer-balls where in good shape

Why aren't all pop-ups mechanical? These still worked after years and years of negligence.

It had truck tire inner-tubes  wrapped around the bumper, I don't know why

Front body was pretty cracked, good news: I don't need it!

Dirty dirty!

Uh-oh, carb is stuck open, doesn't bode well for the engine. I don't need it but I like the idea of rebuilding this one since I haven't really messed with mine. Can you say forged internals, bored over and a super-charger blowing through a carb?

So I dropped the parts car at the shop and over the next few weeks slowly completely tore it apart. I filled 3 twenty-five gallon tubs with the parts, not to mention the engine, trans-axle, seats, rear axle, dashboard, fiberglass, all the glass, door-frames, relays, and accessories. I posted the availability of parts for sale on the SAABSonett.org forums, which if you haven't been there are a fantastic place for information. I've sold $75 worth of parts already so the hope is I can sell at least $300 worth of parts so it will have been a free transmission. So if you need parts for your Sonett III leave a comment here and I'll let you know if I've got it! I plan to eventually have a catalog, with pictures, of everything I pulled off the car.

Interior was quite rough, field mice had made the seats and vents their homes. Tons of mud-daubers, I was glad it was winter and they were all dead.

Front end stripped of everything, suspension, engine, relays, master-cylinders, engine, transmission, accesories.

*NOTE* My cellular telephone broke during the time I was disassembling the parts car, that's why there aren't that many (or any really) pictures of the dissassembly process. My new phone doesn't take that great of pictures so the quality is gonna take a nose dive. I'm trying to get a better camera, but I'm broke, I've got a SAAB sucking out all my money!

So with the car totally stripped of everything usable (and some stuff that probably isn't) I took the frame to the junkyard. I felt bad doing it, but the body was far beyond saving. The trunk pan was worse than the one on my car and actually fell out while we were trailering it, the floorboards were basically paper mache, the rocker panels were see-through and there were holes everywhere, everywhere, and everywhere. The car could have been saved but it would have been cheaper and easier to build a frame from scratch.

Now my attention turns to finishing my car again. I wrote my list of everything I needed to do before I could put the engine and transmission back in. First and foremost was making sure the new transmission was good and clean it. 

Thats what sitting in a field will do to a transaxle. Nothing a little (a lot) of heavy duty gunk, elbow grease, and a wire brush can't take care of!

This is the roll-pin that holds the clutch release arm onto the rotating pin, it took about a can of PB'lastr and two days of pounding on it with several punches of varying size.

Ashcraft suggests that while you have the trans-axle out to check for wear on the arm. If the hole/slot where the release bearing fits have become worn you should weld (MIG preferably) and the grind down the weld to exactly fit the bearing. Worn constitutes 1/16" of space of wear, mine was OK but I did slightly bend the upper arm like a retard when I was pounding the rotating pin out, I worked it back to the correct position in the vice but I would suggest care instead of trying to fix the stupidity.

Wire wheeled and I sanded the inside with some 220 grit so it would fit a little less snuggly to ease reassembly and remove some rust, the rollpin holds it in so the fit doesn't need to be that close

Remember kids, anytime you remove something from a seal plug it with shop towels, you don't want crap getting in there.

Here's the bell-housing off ready to be cleaned, before I removed the clutch shaft.

Here's the clutch shaft removed, to do this you need to remove the bell housing from the trans-axle and then remove the two retaining clips shown in the picture

To get the bell housing off you also need to remove the axle cups, these just literally are hammered out, get a crowbar or I used a jack handle and try to get as much of an angle as you can, pound them out. They'll break loose and slide out. I cleaned off the caked on grease, grime, and for some reason green paint.

So this is the kit Mark Ashcraft will sell you for a single easy payment of $78. Don't buy this, it is a waste of money! Some of his kits are a good deal, this one isn't! It is literally a piece of 1" ID pipe X long (If you need the measurement post a comment and I'll measure it), cut carefully with a pipe-cutter and a crudely cut out cover for the spot the old free-wheel switch was.

When I went to install the sleeve it was supposed to still be able fit the retaining clip over the back, or very close thereto, however I was off by about the entire size of the pipe...

At this point I noticed that this sleeve that was on it... This transmission had already been neutered. This car was seriously well taken care of, thanks Swedish Imports!

Well OK, guess I put it back together now

Repainted the release arm and the tension spring with some black glossy engine enamel.

Here's the transaxle, while I had everything apart I examined the gears and cleaned all the nooks and crannies I could reach to remove any metal or grime that had built up. The teeth of a few gears had some rust so I very carefully scrapped the bigger bits off.

Everything cleaned, polished and reassembled. 

At this point I hadn't put on the rubber grease cap on the linkage ball joint and I hadn't put on the slave cylinder.