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.