Goodbye headlights

I haven't posted in a while, but all I've been working on is sourcing brake parts and getting rid of the popups. Looks the the fittings are all girling, and I think I found someplace to get that stuff. Now I have to go to the library and see if there are any books that tell me how to make a bubble flare. One page on the internet says that its just the first step in a double flare. Well..when it comes from the internet I like to verify. Especially with brake hardware.

So I cut the holes in the front of the saabette for the BMW headlights I bought. Man that first cut was hard. I didn't like the way it looked with just a circle cut in the front...it looks like I took a dremel and cut a hole in the car...which...i did. So I fabricated some half inch tall, 5 inch diameter rings that fit around the headlight. I made them out of a couple of layers of fiberglass wrapped around a circular mold that I made out of laminated cardboard strips. Then I glued them onto the back of the holes I cut in the saab front end. To give a little more support I supported it with some globs of fiberfill.

Its almost impossible to photograph. Here is a picture of it glued in before smoothing with the fiberfill. You get the idea.

Next step is filling in the gaping holes where the popups where. First I cut some metal blanks that fit in the hole from an old metal hood that was laying around. The advantage of that is that modern car sheetmetal has all kinds of anti rust magic applied to it. I helped it along by a good cleaning and coat of paint. Somehow I neglected to ever take pictures of the blanks, but they are simply cut a little wider than I need and then the edges are folded down 90 degrees to form a box like shape. The sides of the box match the fiberglass support that hangs down inside the body. That way, I could actually bolt the metal to the fiberglass for much better structure. I used stainless steel bolts and nuts, locktite and stainless lock washers.

After bolting them down, I simply layed down a couple of layers of fiberglass mat.

I'm actually not talking about a lot of steps actually. I roughed up the edge of the opening very coarsely with a cut off wheel and sanded the area all around. I wanted to get a good bite. I also roughly bevelled the edge of the opening to give more surface area for the fiberglass mat to attach to the car. Between that and the metal support it should be good forever. Or...I'll be back in the class again repainting..at least I know how to do it now. I'll keep the old popups in a closet just in case.

You can see in the picture above that there is quite a bit of build up around the edges of the opening. That had to come off first. An aggressive 8 inch disk of 40 grit took it down quickly. Took a lot of concentration not to gouge the body though. When I was done, I could see how close I came to level with the fiberglass hood. Less than 1/8th of an inch low! Perfect!

So the last steps are easy. Glop on fiberfill to fill the low spots and sand to level. Repeat until level. Then some finish body filler which paints up smoother than the fiberfill. Repeat until perfect. 6 hours of constant sanding with an inline sander to make sure it is level, straight and smooth and I get to this. I couldn't resist an quick spray of primer to see the finished product.

response to gedas

I don't know how much I can help, but I can tell you what I did wrong, and maybe that will help.

I did all of the sheet metal work myself. I bought a 4 foot by 10 foot piece of 16 gauge sheet metal and that just barely was enough for the whole car. I had a LOT of rust. The 16 gauge is a litle thicker than stock, so sometimes that made welding difficult, and it probably added 10-15 pounds total to the car. It will be stronger, but I don't think the car really needed it. I think next time I would use 18 gauge.

The floor boards werent all that hard. I used a bead roller to add rigidity and a hammer and dolly to make some of the odd shapes. The outer rocker panels on the other hand were a disaster. I was short on cash at the time so I couldn't buy Jack Ashcraft's reproductions. I wasn't smart enough to find someone local to make it either. I had a 42" sheet metal brake to do the bending, but it needed to be something like 48" or 52" I can't remember. So I made the rockers in two pieces and welded them together in the center. Big mistake. I could never get it straight, and spent weeks and weeks fussing with them. There is way more fiberglass reinforced mud on those than I am comfortable with. I still have half a mind to do those over before I get any further.

Bracing. You need to brace the chassis before you cut anything out. Mine was so rusted I had to brace it before I even took off the body. Wanna know how I know? When I took the body off, I couldn't close the doors anymore. The tops of the door opening had pinched in a good 3/4 of an inch. Fortuneatly there is a frame straigtening machine in the shop, and I was able to at least get it all level and even again. I just took 1 inch square tubing and welded it in back to front and side to side at the top of the doors. I ran one diagonal, and also some vertical braces down to the cross beam in the floor.

For all of the internal spaces that I can't get to, I was recommended a product called Rust Fighter 'I' from 3M. It is a sticky anti rust goo that protects everything. I'll tell you in 30 years how well it works.

On everything else I hit all of the rust with a wire wheel and a phosphoric acid based rust converter metal etcher. I sanded every nook and cranny with 220 grit paper. Then I used an epoxy primer followed by single stage top coat. The rocker panels, I added some intermediate steps. I hit it with high build primer, and wetsanded it down to 600 grit before painting. I didn't mess with POR 15 or anything like that. I did see someone thin out POR15 and spray it on to his car though, and it looked pretty good.

My car certainly didnt' turn out show quality. The floor patches are all visible if you look for them. But they are going to be covered by carpet anyways. At any rate, good luck, and remember that I'm really not good at this at all. Hopefully my mistakes will help you avoid some of your own.

brought it home

The semester ended, and I didn't feel like sweating in the shop all summer long. The class is MTW from 6pm-10pm. ick. I'm not allowed to store the car there, so I brought the car home and put it in the garage...which necessitated putting the engine into the spare bedroom. Might as well go all the way with the red neck thing.

The paint is still fantastic to my eyes. Of course I've found a few more flaws. And i've noticed some sanding scratches on the roof. That's very strange. I guess I'll have to wet sand it better than 400 grit. They could also be some stray 80 grit scratches that I never hit with the 220, and the 400 just didn't kill them. I don't know. I need to look it over some more.

Saab purists, avert your eyes for this paragraph. Gone? Good. I've always hated the pop up headlights. They ruin the look of the car. In saab's credit, they actually work, unlike every other popup headlight system ever. Some minor adjustments, and replacing the bushings are the worst that ever happen to them. They always always work though. Still, they're ugly. So I'm getting rid of them.

I made some sheet metal inserts to put in the holes in the hood. I'll screw them into the flanges that used to hold the popups. Then, I'll drape a sheet of fiberglass and resin over the sheet metal (painted of course) and smooth up the hole with body filler.

So that I can see at night, I picked up a pair of headlights off of a 1990 BMW three series. I'll fab up some brackets and mount them in the grill. I like the 5.5 inch round headlights, as they preserve the 70s look of the car. It's kind of an Alpha Romeo look, which blends nicely with the italian designed saab body. But BMW put projector beams in the middle of the headlight, so I get modern efficiency as well. All for about $150. Which I guess isn't all that cheap, but the projector beams by themselves cost $70 each new, and this way I get the bracket with the adjusters as well.

I'm excited about getting those in the grill. Then when I have that fabbed up, the hood will be ready for priming. My next project will be to get the body on the chassis. I'm collecting the various seals to do that. Just won a couple of them on Ebay. I'll probably try and get the body seals from JC whitney or the local parts store. Making progress, yeah...

Oh, here is a picture of the bmw.


This is a stock saab, with the auxillary lights in the grill. Double the number of lights in your imagination and you get the idea.

First painting

I'm giggly. The first paint is on the car. I took the headlight bucket into Johnson's paint and matched up a metallic pretty close. I had the paint codes for the original blue. (PPG 14760 in case any one is interested). Of course, since I wanted a metallic blue, it didn't make a difference. You can't just add metal flake to a solid paint. The paint itself has to be translucent.

So I did the best I could with paintchips and the headlight bucket. It doesn't really matter since I'm painting the whole car...It could be pink if I was so inclined. But I wanted it to be representative of the original color.

Today I painted and it looks fantastic. There are a couple of spots here and there that will need to be fixed, but since this is my first shoot, I expected that, and bought extra paint. It is however VERY good. It could be left as is and 95% of people would never see the flaws.

It took three coats of blue to cover everything completely, and then two coats of clear to make it shine. I'll finish painting the rest of the car, and put it together. Then I'll probably scuff it all up again, add one last coat of blue and two more coats of clear, and it'll be perfect.

Pictures:

WET sanding this time

Last week, before I left, I hit the stripped and repaired body with an epoxy sealer, and then a filler surfacer primer. The filler/surfacer is a high build primer that helps fill in the low spots. It was very exciting to have the body all one color. It was an amazing feeling.

So this week, I started by putting a light guide coat of rattle can primer on the car. Not enough to have a color per say, just a light misting. Then...guess what? I sanded. This phase is called 'blocking' the car. I used 400 grit wet sand paper and sanded until my hands fell off, or until the guide coat was gone. Low spots show up when the guide coat doesn't sand away, while the surrounding area gets sanded down to fiberglass. High spots are the opposite. Thankfully, there were VERY few, VERY minor low and high spots. Saab does a really good job with fiberglass. The corvette guys in the class are very jealous.

After I was done, there were a few pinholes left over from the 30 year old filler on some of the edges, and a couple of minor low spots. I got that all finished before I left. Which means....next week...paint...eep!

I have to pick out the color...i think I'll go with the original blue, but with a little metallic added in. Unfortuneatly, you can't just go get the color code and say "add metallic". It won't work. You have to go get a paint that was fully designed with metallics. So I'll have to dig through the paint chips for all of the manufacturers and come up with something that's pretty close.

more more sanding

I WAS going to make a new myspace for the saabette, and move all the blogs over there...but Myspace makes it exceeding difficult to copy blogs...so pppbbbblllttt...I'll find another blogspace that is more backup friendly and myspace loses my "business"
sanding sanding sanding. I found a source for the windshield gasket, so I got to break up the monotony of sanding with removing the windshield. I have all of the sanding done except for some little spots here and there. I'll take care of those this weekend. Hopefully this weekend, I'll have the first coat of primer on too.

I say first coat, because first I'll seal it, then hit it with a high build primer. I'll then carefully sand the high build primer until the surface is perfectly smooth. That may take a couple of attempts.

I like the jawbreaker effect sanding it. There is blue topcoat, rust color primer, white somethingorother, and brownish fiberglass.

more sanding

late saabette update.
I sanded. The passage of time measured by the gradual flow of sand...ing. Leaded dust gently exchanging it's 30 years of stored potential energy for a final kinetic rush to its lowest energy state. The heat of friction releasing stored poly esters dormant since their casting in a far away land. Perhaps they will be carried back by the air currents to their home in sweden. Perhaps they will mate with the chemicals in the air above pasadena to form super esters. Perhaps, in time they will coalesce into super ester life forms, reproducing with squirts of catalyst into super ester resin, hardening exothermically into baby esters. Many millenia after the passing of the human race, they will rule the planet. By that time...i should be done sanding...i hope...