Tommi’s Saab Site

The underside of the car is now ready for corrosion protection. Everything has been painted:

A can of Dinitrol “Corrosion protection for vehicle underbody” and a suitable spraygun.

I see Black! Black!

The great thing about painting the underbody a light colour is obvious. You see immediately if you miss a spot when spraying the corrosion protection.

The thing to remember is to blug every single hole in the body and mask the areas that don’t need this stuff…

It took almost three cans (3 litres) to get the whole underbody covered.

Nasty stuff. You really need to wear full protective clothing (hair and everything) with this stuff. When you spray it, it’s pretty much like standing in a cloud of spray glue. It’s not exactly poisonous but it make’s everything sticky …and black.

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We have a local fleamarket type happening here every year. Mostly antiques and car and motorcycle stuff. Hundreds of sellers and tons of stuff.

Surprisingly little Saab stuff this year though. But I made a few nice finds.

A wood steering wheel for a V4. Pretty good condition too.

A sun shade for the 99-900 Combi-Coupe (image from Wikimedia Commons)

I also got original Saab chrome wheel rings for the 96.

And these were a really nice find:

A bunch of Swedish racing yearbooks. Lot’s about Saabs and rallying in them! Great opportunity to patch up my rusty swedish.

As you may remember I currently have two right hand side doors that should be made into one…

The stroker door has had the skin removed and the green V4 door is going to donate one.

But the sroker door also has some rust issues to deal with:

So it is not just the matter of replacing the skin, we have to replace some of the door body also.

Well… Take the bull by the horns…

First, the cutting points needed to be figured out:

And then just cut it:

The idea in cutting the pieces this way is to get as little seams on visible areas as possiple. This way a good part of the seams will be behind door trim and you only need to use time on finishing the visible sections perfectly.

Then, test fit and mark the cutting points on the other door:

Ofcourse, you need to allow for some fitting, so the cuts are positioned so that there’s a couple centimeters overlap at this point.

And this is how far we got today:

To be continued…

All welding on the body is now done!

The final pieces that went on:

Stone guard on the left hand side.

And the right.

The two piece mounting bracket and the bottom half of the stone guard were practically corroded away, so they have been fabricated from sheet metal.

The top section of the back seat support was also replaced.

…

Wow! What a milestone! It feels so nice that the body is now complete.

Ofcourse there’s still a lot to be done, but some things are starting to look quite ok:

Note the little holes in the center of the lid for the old school SAAB airplane badge

Driver side door getting a coating of primer. This is the modified Saab 93 door.

But there’s still plenty to do:

The welding may be done, but there’s still some cleaning and filling to do before I can start painting the body. Also, I have to go through the seams with body sealant before paint.

…

The main goal is to get the body painted (final overcoat) this summer. That way I can start putting stuff in during the winter (when painting is not possible).

I haven’t been able to have a real holiday for the last couple of years because of the firm, but this summer I am taking a full month! So I am pretty confident that I can get this done.

Proggress:

During the winter the parts for the original motor of the car (the origial 1964 bullnose motor, not the longnose motor I’m actually going to use in the car) has been restored also.

It looked so nice I decided to take more pictures than usual

Here goes:

Getting ready to clean and paint the underside of the car:

Honestly. It is a lot safer than it looks

(Yes it is properly supported and the center of gravity is actually on the roof side, so no danger of falling over).

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There’s a Saabclub meet coming up next saturday, so I sorted out some stuff I decided I will not need anymore. Let’s see if someone else needs any:

Update 2008-6-1

Ok. The Saabmeet went just fine! Great cars and great people, I’ll try and get a few photos online soon. I also managed to sell a bit of the surplus, which was great also.

The underside of the car is now pretty much cleaned. Still found a few little spots that needed welding though.

Ready for paint.

The old jack supports were removed earlier to repair the area. Now we put them back.

Dad checking if we measured the placement correctly.

I’d say that’s pretty much spot on

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Nothing to do with the project: