HOT OFF THE PRESS!

Now you really can "wrap your ass in fiberglass" though my wife says Spandex works better!This is me and my latest HOW-TO book--one of 15 on Saab mechanicals--that just came from the printers.

This tome runs to 112 pages and has 286 illustrations, telling YOU--step-by-step--how to work with fiberglass composites. I show you how to repair virtually everything on Sonetts, how to build air dams, wings, NACA ducts, air scoops, and a TON more!


Here are a couple of pages out of the book to give you an idea about how it is laid out. Illustrations go next to the instructions, which are put in a logical sequence. I tell you how to use polyester, vinyl ester, and epoxy resins, along with a variety of fiberglass cloth materials, including graphite [also called carbon fiber] and Kevlar, along with normal "E" cloth, the cloth used in Sonett bodies. The best part is this: I show you how to do it--safely and easily--right in your own work shop!

I show you a very wide range of repair and construction projects. One of the more ambitious is how to convert the busted back window of a Sonett II or V4 to a three window hatch, as shown here. "It is not original!" Yup, you're right. But those deep draw rear windows are now made of a product called unobtanium, so no matter what you do, the result ain't gonna be "original". This is a pretty good solution, it looks pretty good, and I show you how to do it step-by-step.
The new FIBERGLASS GUIDE books are sitting here, ready to ship. Call me at 541-499-0246 or email me at jacksonashcraft@gmail.com and I can tell you more about 'em. You'll get more than your money's worth at $69.00 plus postage. Get ready...to WRAP YER ASS IN FIBERGLASS!

SPEEDMEISTER STRIKES AGAIN!

VDO speedometers, like others of its ilk, are fairly delicate little buggers. I treat 'em like they are a big watch, and have built a number of special tools to EASE 'em apart and EASE 'em back together again. I use the dial indicator to get measurements BEFORE I take the speedo gubbins apart--I like to put them back together at the factory settings.[Ignore the pliers].

The red tools are the special ones. At the top, the press to press the main odometer shaft back into place after the bad odo gear on that shaft has been changed. Immediately below, to the left, the puller for the speedo needle. To its right, a puller for the wee brass gear on the main odo shaft. Two mount fixtures are below, and I use them to hold the speedo frame firmly in place while I change out the parts.

This is the back section of a Sonett III speedometer. The round "drum" in the center is a very small permanent magnet that makes the speedo needle operate. To the left of the drum are a set of plastic gears that operate the odometer assembly number wheels. I check all this stuff and replace bad parts, and then lube all the moving parts.

The pointer indicates the main odo shaft. On the table to the right is a new odo drive gear that I am about to install. This little sucker fits to the extreme right end of the TOP number register. I have already removed the bad gear.

This is the wee press that I built to press the main odo shaft back into place. I press the shaft into place so it has the same clearances on each end as it did before I took it apart. Note that the new odo drive gear [the white one on the right end of the register] is in place.

I've adjusted and lubed all the internals and its going back together. Note the use of one of the [red] stabilizing stands. Just a matter of putting it all into the case, cleaning the glass face, and snapping on the chrome retaining ring.
As I said in an earlier blog, VDO speedometers are no big mystery to me. If you have one that only "odo's" when it feels like it, it may be just like the one you see in these pictures. I can change the bad stuff inside, clean, lube and adjust the rest and PRESTO! A speedo good for another 100,000 miles. AND....I can do it for a whole lot less than the "regular" speedo shops charge. Give me a growl and lets talk!

SPEAKING SPEEDOMETER

VDO speedometers are pretty trouble-free, for the most part. However the ODOMETER portion gets tired after while and in order put them into good fettle once again, they have to come apart. This isn't a real easy thing to do, assuming you don't want that nice chrome bezel all boogered up.

This is the anti-booger tool that I designed and built. It clamps the speedo just right, and the handle [with a wedge tool attached to the speedo end] peels the chrome bezel off, slick as a whistle, without damaging the bezel. SLICK!

I have to take off the speedo needle in order to get the number face off, in order to take the speedo apart to get to the odometer bits that go South. The needle is fragile. I'm using a little puller tool that I built--to pull the needle without doing a booger job on it, either. Gentle is the name of the game when working with speedometers!

Voila! the face is off and I have the front half of the speedo in my left hand. I've set aside the rear portion of the unit. I'm pointing to a plastic gear that is in the chain of gears that drives the odometer [and the trip meter as well]. Unfortunately, this easy-to-get-to plastic gear is NOT the one that gives up the ship in these speedometers. ARRRGGGHHH!

See that little brass gear? That little sucker isn't the one that goes tango uniform, either. But it has to be pulled to get to the bad one. The bad one is the GREY pot metal gear just to the right of the numbers register that is on the bottom in this photo, between the last register and the speedo frame. I built the little puller I'm holding. That little sucker pulls that wee brass gear quite nicely. THEN...I can take the numbers drums out, get the bad Grey gear [called an "advancer"], replace it and chuck it all back together. Fun times!

I hate to re-create wheels. So I spent time drawing [in rather a lot of detail] exploded views of all the gubbins in these speedometers. Makes the process of disassembly, cleaning, repair, oiling and reassembly a whole lot easier. So if your odometer refuses to odo, I can make it all better once again, because, see...I speak speedometer...HA!
I've been repairing these VDO speedos for some years now. I don't see them as some sort of mysterious device that can only be repaired after a lot of money has changed hands. Give me a shout--let's talk about what it takes to fix the VDO speedo in your wee Saab.

GIVE ME A BRAKE

I regularly have a need to bend pieces of sheet steel or aluminum, or strap of either persuasion. A small brake was in order, so....I built one. The component parts are shown here.


There are three pieces of 1.75" x 1.75" x 0.200" steel angle, some 0.200" thick pieces of plate [at the ends of two of the angles], a couple of 0.50" diameter "J" bolts, a 6.0" piece of 0.75" O.D. pipe, and two 7/16" bolts with nylock nuts.

Here it is, assembled, with a piece of 18 gauge sheet steel set in place, ready to be bent. [The light colored piece in the middle of the brake is the steel to be bent]. The aft, LOWER angle is mounted in my bench vise. The aft UPPER angle holds the piece to be bent into place by tightening the nuts on the welded-in-place bolts on either end. So now it is just a matter....

...of lifting the handle to bend the piece of steel sheet. The brake will accept metal up to 12.5" wide,
and will easily bend aluminum sheet up to 0.125" thick and steel sheet up to 16 gauge. It will also bend steel strap up to 0.125" thick and 2.0" wide.

The angle of the photo isn't great, but it does show the piece of 18 gauge bent to about 45 degrees. At this point, I simply loosen the two nuts on the aft TOP angle and slide the bent piece forward, out of the brake. As they say in the translated instructions, "Welding, some drilling and cut is to be required." Followed by three equally well translated paragraphs on how not to kill yourself with your welder, your drill press or your hack saw.
At any rate, this is an easy to build, and very useful little tool that takes up very little storage space for the 98% of the time you won't need it. And it works like a champ for that 2% of the time when you DO need it.

FREEWHEEL FOIBLE FIXED

You are looking at the front of another customer's Saab V4 transmission, mounted in my factory transmission press. The gear with the large teeth is the pinion gear. Above and to the left of that gear is a screwed-up input shaft hub. Inside that hub is the freewheel unit. The pulley-looking thing sticking out of the hub is whats called a "dog clutch" gear. Someone with probably good intentions had welded on half washers to hold the dog clutch engaged, rendering the freewheel inoperative, or as we call it,"neutered".

The problem with this neutering method is that it throws the main shaft out of balance, and makes it impossible to ever revert to freewheeling again. This is really not a good way to neuter the freewheel.

Here is the main shaft after I removed it from the transmission. You can clearly see the dog clutch piece dangling from the freewheel hub of the main shaft. Hmmmm.....what to do to save the expensive main shaft and dog clutch....hmmmm....

I put the sucker in my lathe and began to cut off the half washers, by cutting through the welds. This is the cutter set-up on the carriage fixture on my lathe. I have made the first cut in this picture.

This is the second and final lathe set-up. The cut has gone through the welds and is into the half washers. My hope--at this point--was that the welding had not screwed up the freewheel hub. If it had, the mainshaft was junk.

VOILA! The cut is completed. The owner got lucky. The main shaft, the dog clutch and even the freewheel parts inside the hub were all still good. All I had to do from this point was to use the lathe cutter to clean up the end of the freewheel hub.
The point of this? There is a right way and many wrong ways to do something. This was one of the wrong ways that I managed to correct. I WILL neuter the freewheel, but do it the right way, so nothing is out of balance, and should the owner [or subsequent owner] ever get soft in the head and want to make the freewheel function again, he [or they] can do so.

BUSHED, BABY!

Bosch distributors, as used in Saabs with V4 engines, get old, tired and sloppy. [I've known some mechanics like that, too...]. Bosch didn't bother to put bushings at the BOTTOM of the distributor body, so over time and a lot of miles, the aluminum distributor body gets "hogged out". When that happens, the ignition point gap varies as the engine runs, the dwell changes, and the basic engine timing changes. And the engine runs like crap.

Here is my setup in that pretty blue lathe again, to machine out the bottom of the distributor body so I can install a bushing. I built a precision tool [mounted in the lathe chuck in this photo] to hold the distributor body on its exact center line. The precision lathe bit [shown in the steady chuck at the bottom of the photo] does not move. The chuck in the lathe rotates the distributor body as the steady chuck advances the bit through the body, machining the correct diameter hole as it goes.

Here I am using a larger bit in my big, commercial drill press to do a light chamfer in the freshly machined hole. This will allow the bushing to start into the distributor body easier.

I use a bolt that is machined to JUST slightly smaller than the diameter of the new bushing to guide the bushing into the distributor body. The bolt is long enough to fit through the bushing on the TOP end of the distributor body, so the bolt forms a perfect guide as I press the bushing into place. The bushing is an interference [plus] fit into the distributor body.

I use an adjustable reamer to open up the bushing to an inside diameter equal to the diameter of the distributor lower shaft, plus 0.003". I always HAND ream, and never attempt to speed up the reaming process as some might by putting the reamer in a hand drill. I ream a little, then test fit the shaft, and repeat the process until it is just right. When I'm finished with one of these Bosch distributors, it doesn't know it isn't young, vibrant and ready to go for thousands of miles once again.

THE DOCTOR IS IN!

I seem to have accumulated, over the years, a whole lot of drill bits. Well, y'know, you break one or it gets too dull to make a hole, and you throw it in a box and buy a new one. Or some supplier offers you a deal you can't refuse on a whole new SET of drills...and finally you get tired of moving the box of tired drill bits around. Either sharpen 'em or pitch 'em out. Given the price of new bits--especially the larger diameter bits--I decided it was time to call....THE DOCTOR!


The DRILL DOCTOR, to be more specific. Behind several dozen drill bits in various boxes, is the DOCTOR, itself. It is the gray machine just to the right of center in the picture. To the right is a drill bit in a special chuck, ready to be sharpened. So--if you'll pardon the pun--here's the drill:

You put the drill to be sharpened in the special chuck, loosely. Then you insert both into the opening on the Doc. The one toward the left end of the little machine. You use the special fixture in there to orient the drill in the chuck correctly. Then you tighten the chuck, lightly, take it out of the Doc and finish tightening it. Next it goes in the opening on the right end of the little machine. You turn on the switch and rotate the chuck clockwise, with a gentle pressure on the chuck. The machine operates the bit on a cam and cuts the bit at the correct angle AND on a bevel that puts the cutting edge of each side of the bit higher than the heel, or back side of the bit.

The bloody bits come out BEAUTIFUL! I did all different sizes, from 3/32" up to 1/2" and Mr Doc didn't screw up ANY of 'em. I got into it and before I knew it, 2 hours had passed and I'd sharpened 67 old bits. JEEZ! I can drill the hell out of stuff now--HA!

I WISH this were a paid testimonial for DRILL DOCTOR....but, sadly, it ain't. But I can tell you one thing---I saved enough dough in that two hours [in the price of new drill bits] to pay for the little Doc a couple of times over. The little sucker really works!

EXHAUST & DONUTS

You are looking at the CHUCK end of my lathe. The piece in the lathe is the stator from a customer's alternator. The brass colored thingies are called "slip rings". The brushes in the alternator rub continuously against these slip rings and after about a jillion miles, wear grooves in the slip rings. Using this lathe set-up, I carefully cut the slip rings to a smooth surface without the grooves.
This doesn't have a darn thing to do with exhaust systems or donuts, but the lathe is a pretty color, yes? Well....

The deal with a lathe is to make a number of VERY light cuts. Getting heavy handed here can gouge [and ruin] the slip ring. That makes junk out of the whole alternator stator. Not good. A lathe is a great tool, when you know how to use it correctly.

NOW we can talk about exhaust systems and "donuts". On a Saab/Ford V4 engine, the donut fits against the exhaust manifold gasket. I open up the exhaust PORTS to gasket size, so the donut has to be opened up to an inside diameter just a wee bit larger than the gasket. This is the lathe set-up, showing the donut mounted in a special holding tool that I built.

Once again, I make a number of light cuts until I get the inside diameter that I want. You can see a previously cut donut laying on the lathe platform [yellow painted area], right behind the lathe carriage.

You are looking at the RIGHT side of a freshly rebuilt, high performance Saab V4 engine. I'm holding the opened-up donut in my left hand, and the end of an exhaust header pipe and pipe securing flange in my right. You can see that the dount is actually larger--by quite a bit--than the header pipe. This engine will get larger diameter header pipes, part of a big bore high performance exhaust system.

KEEP YOUR COOL!

Engines with a lot more than stock horsepower [or an air conditioner, or both] need a lot more than stock COOLING! This is how I do it when my customer is serious about protecting his [expensive] high performance V4 Saab engine. This is a "take no prisoners" radiator and fan set-up. I have built a large number of systems just like this one and they really work!

The dual Flex-A-Lite 850 cfm 10" fans are shown above the modified Sonett III radiator. This set up is going into a Saab 95 wagon with a 115 bhp V4 engine, and will ultimately also have an air conditioner unit installed. Note the mount straps [at ends and center] with quarter inch mount bolts welded in place. Flex-A-Lite wants you to mount the fans to the radiator CORE, which is a very bad idea. The strap mount system I use prevents damage to the radiator core, from the weight and constant vibration of the fans.

Here the fans are set in place to check the fit on the rebuilt, re-cored radiator. I snug the fans up as close to the radiator core as I can, though nothing actually quite touches the core.

The assembled unit, ready for installation. The relays and the adjustable thermal switch will be mounted forward on the left inner fender well of the Saab 95. All the wires are shielded and clamped into place. I don't believe in doing a half-assed job on any work I do, and this is a good example.

This is the wiring layout for the dual fan set up. The thermostatic switch will turn on the primary [left] fan at the preset coolant temperature. When the air conditioner compressor turns ON, the secondary [right] fan will come on. The driver can flip a toggle switch to turn on either [or both] fans. Whenever either fan comes on, for whatever reason, the monitor light next to the override switch for that fan will light up. Your V4 engine would LOVE to have a killer cooling system like this in front of it!

YA! NOW VE GO FAST!

Well, this engine is done and ready to drop into the customer's car. It is an over-bored 1700cc Saab V4 that will produce around 115 horsepower. With the proper COOLING SYSTEM this engine will run at 6000 rpm for as long as the owner has the road and the courage to drive it that way.

This little screamer has a big 2 bbl Weber carb, a high torque cam, big valves, big ports, a light flywheel, and is fully balanced to race engine spec's. Saab-o-files will note the lack of a fan pulley on the front cover. Horsepower, guys, equals HEAT, and this sucker will have a BIG radiator with two electric fans.

From the back, you can see the light flywheel, the rebuilt, recalibrated, recurved distributor, and get a peek at the back side of the Weber carburetor. I spend a lot of time modiflying, measuring, fitting all the engine parts and carefully tightening every bolt and nut to the correct torque spec's on my engines. I build every engine as if I intended to use it in one of my own cars. And...YA SURE! I LIKE TO GO FAST!

PISTONEERING, PART 2

Here I'm putting on a connecting rod cap...AND doing it so the numbers on cap and rod are on the same side--a VERY good idea.

I have already checked each of the rod bearings for the correct clearance. Time to "button 'er up."

Being a belt and suspenders sort of guy, I add LOKTITE to the con rod nuts. Cheap insurance, see...

I'm using a recently calibrated precision "clicker" torque wrench to tighten the rod bolts to exactly the correct torque. And yup, I DO check them all twice. Note the new [orange] rear crankshaft seal. You can also just see two of the five new [brass color] water jacket expansion plugs in the block. All the reciprocating parts of this engine have been precision balanced by a local shop that has built over 5000 V8 racing engines. He thinks its FUN to do a little Ford V4!
Engines that we build in this horsepower range idle smoothly, are completely reliable and have amazing performance.

PISTONEERING, PART 1

Here is a nice set of new oversize pistons on rebuilt connecting rods. The four are balanced to 1/10 of a gram--NICE when you expect the engine to "live" at elevated RPM!

Note the new connecting rod bearings and a set of V8 rod bolts and nuts. V8??? Yeah...I get serious when I build a hot V4 engine! This one will produce about 110 horsepower for our customer. He wants to go fast! How about you?

I'm holding the number 3 piston assembly, with the piston ring compressor tool compressing the rings. Note the orange sleeves on the connecting rod bolts.These keep the bolts from damaging the crankshaft journal when the piston is tapped into place.

This is a three handed job. One to tap the piston into the bore, one to guide the rod into place on the crankshaft journal. The third to keep the ring compressor tight. Oh yeah--and the arrow on the piston crown has to face FORWARD as the piston is tapped into place with a wooden hammer handle. Piece 'a cake, mate!

Here I've rotated the engine upside down. I've just pulled one of the protective sleeves off a con rod bolt. Nice to use the right tools for the job, eh? I have 'em all! I've been rebuilding these engines for 42 years and counting. I've probably done about 300 stock, race & rally engines in that time....

FLOPPER STOPPER

The rearmost bottom corners of a Sonett III hood assembly is normally held in place with a bolt. The tilt hood on the Electric Norseman makes that sort of fix just a tad unhandy. My fix is a set of inclined pins--one on each side of the car--welded to the square steel inner hood reinforcement. Each pin--as the hood is lowered and latched at the back, slips over a horizontal pin bolted to the frame. When the hood is latched down, the lower corners of the hood just snug up to the frame of the car, so it all lines up and doesn't flop around.

I got in a bitch of a position to take this under-fender photo, but you can clearly see the inclined pin. As the hood goes DOWN, the pin draws the hood IN, against the frame of the car. I made the bracket--that is bolted to the frame--adjustable, so it is entirely possible to get it "just right".


Two drawings in one....the main drawing shows the tilt hood partly open. No. 2 [in both drawings] is the square steel reinforcement frame inside the 'glass hood skin. You can see where the inclined pin is welded to that frame, and how, when the hood is closed, the pin slides right over the second pin on the strap bolted to the frame of the car.

In the smaller drawing on the right, No. 1 is the fiberglass skin of the car, No. 2 is the square steel reinforcing frame, and No. 3 shows how the fiberglass hood skin is sucked right in against the frame of the car. Thus "gestopping der flopping." Simple fixes are almost always the best.

OPERATING IN A VACUUM

I've never been much for "...oh, I think that's OK..." when it comes to rebuilding distributors. The engines that get my rebuilt distributors don't think much of guesswork, either. This picture shows a special tool that I built, a MightyVac and the data sheet that records exactly what was done to a typical distributor and the results of the rebuild work.

I plot out the curves--shown on the data sheet--for mechanical advance [top] and vacuum advance [bottom]. The mechanical advance curve is checked on the SUN distributor machine. I correct that curve by taking the distributor apart and changing advance springs. Testing it again on the SUN machine tells me if I managed to get the correct springs or not. This can go on....and on....I call it the perverse nature of inanimate objects....

This is the tool I built to test the advance curve of any Bosch vacuum advance unit [the silver "pot" mounted on the tool at the bottom of the photo]. I attach a MightyVac to the vacuum advance unit and start applying vacuum to the advance unit. I read the vacuum applied [on the MightyVac dial] for each degree of advance [shown on the scale at the end of the red tool. I record that on the graph on the data sheet.

Another view of the tool. The scale at the end is calibrated in degrees, taken off a precision protractor. It's a lot of screwing around to make an old, nasty, dirty, tired, worn-out distributor like new again! But the engines my distributors go into think my time was well worth it. A guy told me once he thought I operated in a vacuum. I told him I probably did but it was a precision one.

HAVING A RE-LATCH

This is the OTHER half of the hood latch system for the tilt hood mechanism in the Electric Norseman '73 Sonett. This is the SECOND pin...I built the FIRST pin half an inch too bloody short! The fair Kathleen said something about "...dumb shit...", tho' I didn't hear all of that....

The latch PIN threads into a nut welded to a sleeve, that is in turn welded to a mount plate. The mount plate bolts to the square steel frame for the tilt hood mechanism. The pin is adjustable in all three planes. The view is the passenger side of the hood [with the hood open]. The stock hood door is on the left side of the photo.

The hood pin [top center] just about ready to drop into the latch assembly. The hood ass'y is just about closed. Uhhh...I THINK it is going to reach, now....Photo taken from inside the right fender well.

The pin is in place, locked into the latch assembly. YES! It DID reach! Note that the Fiat latches have a strong "push-up" spring [out of view in this photo] that pushes the hood ass'y up about 1.5 inches when the latch is released. So now the Norseman has a new latch on life.....