Upgrading and Upcycling

Most of the day was planned for Saabeth – my son’s car. The right rear wheel arch – a typical problem area on a Saab 900 – is badly rusted and needs to be fixed. The required repair panels are available at Scandix and I ordered them earlier this week. My job for this repair is to remove and clean all the Aero trim pieces and bumpers.

But before I even could get started, I had promised to do a LED (Wipac, Osaram Nightbreaker as well as all exterior light bulbs) conversion to on an orange 1978 rubber bumper MGB GT. An upgrade that was somewhat questionable on this car. My estimate is that these parts cost roughly 6% of the entire car. The owner did not want me to post any picture here before his car looks nicer (small hint: cleaning would be a good start) Rust problems in the rear also caused issues with the lights – which were solved by adding grounding wires.

After this I removed the bumper and exterior trim from the Saab. An easy task – but I took my time to ensure not to damage any of the panels. These are hard to get nowadays. The bumper brackets also do not look nice anymore – I will have them powder-coated again. Besides the rear arch – I did not see too much rust elsewhere. The bottom of the doors looks good – just two little spots of the size of a penny that need attention. We had the chassis rails repaired a few years ago – as well as the axle shaft tunnels.

Last task I started on today is upcycling my old Computer desk frame. My father-in-law made this more than 25 years ago for our first apartment. It then served as repair desk in the basement before it was used in the garden for the last two years. The plywood top did not survive this. When I looked at it without a top – I immediately had an idea for a great upcycling project. When I turn the frame around, add castor wheels to the corners – it will become an engine roll around, an engine test stand and workshop trolley all at once.

Well, it might become all of this. After removing at the rust off the frame, I hoisted up the 18V engine and started to measure. An important step in this very “scientific process” is too sleep a night over it 🙂