A week of contrast is finally coming to an end. Sunday a week ago started with the plan to assemble the freshly painted Mini engine. But more important things came up. The evening got me working on a HIF7 adapter for a Edelbrock Performer Manifold of the Rover V8.
While I was tinkering with FreeCad and AI, my wife got a phone call from our son. A few weeks back he moved from the UK to start a new job in Austria for the winter. Without a doubt – public transport in small Austrian villages is not on par with London. So when he said it would be nice to have his Saab – I said, sure – I will drive it over for you.
This however in the back of my mind this set a few gears into motion. First, I knew that the oil change was overdue. It was on my spring maintenance list – but as the Saab was parked most of the year – pushed back over and over. Last job the car was the headliner install back in August. And quite a few interior parts were not finished due to issues with the center console switches. The second problem was four almost flat tires.
The all-season Vredestein on the 16inch Saab Aero rims only covered about 27000km in four years. Good enough for the little bit of snow in our region – but everything but ideal for a Wintersport resort in the Alps. So an order for 185/65r15 Continental WinterContact 870 went out immediately. A set of used original Saab 15inch steel wheels was available on eBay. All to be delivered until Friday.
From Tuesday to Thursday I had a business trip to Málaga. Certainly not the worst location to work. But the Rover V8 intake adapter topic got me excited. And all available free brain cycles went into thinking about the SD1 rebuild – maybe because two books by Des Hammill accompanied me. Some decisions need to be made in the upcoming days – but my V8 Daydreaming had to end.
On Friday I rushed to the workshop after work. With a bit of help I was able to get the new tires on the wheels. Balancing showed that despite a bit of rust the steel rims are in good shape. Saturday morning left a few hours to sort out many small tasks I had not finished. The trim on the rear pillar required a hole for the seat belts bolts, all center console switches went out, were cleaned and I got the interior light and the electric windows working again. The rear bench pivots were fixed and secured, so that the bench can finally be folded down correctly again.
The printed shift mechanism I re engineered and printed last year had held up fine – to one part is a tiny bit too small. This makes shifting annoying. There was no time to print a new one. After taking the dog for a walk, dinner and a short rest, I started my journey to Austria.
Taking the Autobahn between midnight and early morning hours has the major benefit that there is usually no traffic at all. And this was true this time as well. The first 480km only took four hours. But it was raining cats and dogs most of the time. Not thinking anything bad I reach down to my backpack in the passenger foot well. To my surprise it was soaking wet.
At the filling station I noticed that my left shoe was wet as well – on the driver side I temporarily had a few centimeters of water in the footwell. After I arrived my son and I got straight to work. We removed the entire interior to get out the carpets and sound reading. We removed some drain hole rubber plugs and dried the floor with rags.
Now that I am on my way back in a train I wonder where this is coming from. The windscreen and rubber were exchanged three years ago. This needs to be investigated – but this has to wait until the car is back in Germany
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