Where does the time go I always wonder, with a break from plowing and shoveling snow with having some nice weather this weekend, it was time to focus back in the garage on some projects. Being that Corrado's are scarce birds these days, I was asked if mine would be done for New England Dustoff...which got me thinking about having a hard date to at least focus on.
However before that focus could be dialed in, I needed to deal with an unfortunate aftermarket part failure from two weeks ago. The daily 04 Saab had snapped a H&R Coil spring on the front right....for the second time, luckily I knew the sound and then limped the car home from work. The fist time the spring failed I had lent the car to a friend who had no idea what the noise was, this resulted in not only a ruined strut mount but also a destroyed Bilstein Shock as well.
Not good, that is the strut mount bearing hanging out right there.
So first thing Friday night was to pull the springs out...then enjoy my tasty beverage and asses the plan for the weekend. I ended up ordering a new set of springs as I had not heard back from H&R on the warranty for the 2nd time, figured they will drag their feet so I could steal the fronts from this kit while waiting on the others to show up. Then the kit could be used on the 06 2.8t car later this year.
The spring compressor being all mounted up, was still needing some last fixes prior to use. So with coffee in hand an early part of Saturday morning was removing the spring detents, re-welding the broken tab, then thru bolting the adjustments. Being that I only need it once in a while, the time lost with the bolts vs spring detents is not a major loss for a home hobby shop.
With that done it made for quick work putting the new strut mounts and bearings from FCP in, I am sure I will be needing another set in the future of getting this old girl to 300k miles.
However, one must be aware these days that most places selling kits might not actually check their parts for total fitment. The strut mount hardware was ~7mm too long and would hit the strut bearing so the old hardware was used.
With the 9-3 all fixed up, it was time to focus on the Corrado. I was not happy with how the oil cooler setup was, so I decided to take it apart to remove the factory coolant/oil exchanger. In process discovered two issues. First issue was that the threaded adapter was too long and would need to be turned down, the other issue was that the flange had made it by QC or lack there of and needed much deburring/cleaning.
While I cannot remember where I got this adapter kit from, it is something folks should be aware of when buying and installing aftermarket parts.
Some deburring and viola after a quick run through the ultrasonic cleaner.
Next was to shorten the feed tube up.
With weight savings still a large part of the build, I found an old early two piece accessory bracket and cut off the AC section. And milled it to remove some more weight.
Next up was to start getting an idea for the intake setup, looks like some extra work of not only making an intake pipe, but also having to figure something out for the coolant hose will be needed.
Since I was remounting the HID ballasts to the rebar with nutserts, some of the openings on a set needed to be milled open a little more.
I had already done all the doors over in the heater box, so doing the gaskets for the various pipes for the foot and vent heaters was the final project as I needed to chase down some adhesive after work this week.
Wrapping up the end of the weekend was enjoying another Lord Hobo while assessing the upcoming plan for buttoning up the wiring and getting the dash into the car.
Now the big question is if it can be finished and running for April 28th