Swedish Car Day was two sundays ago, so I spent a few hours Saturday getting the Sonett’s brakes finished. It turned out the lines West Of Sweden sent me were fine, I just had to remove some adapters the previous owner had installed. The brake system on the Sonett was certainly not designed with maintenance in mind however, and if I even have to replace those lines again, I’m going to re-engineer them.

Anyway, on the way home from the event, the car gradually started back firing pretty badly and I could hear a faint rattling in the engine bay as I pulled away from stop lights. Since I had the next day off, I went out to take a look. It turns out one of the the right side exhaust pipe nuts had fallen off and the other one was dangerously loose. I panicked that the nut was lost forever until I remembered the rattling. Sure enough, a quick survey of the engine floor with a flash light turned up the bolt, and a few minutes of cursing with a socket wrench tightened up the exhaust.

With that minor struggle out of the way I installed some new spark plugs in the car and look a test drive…

What a fantastic change, the car runs so smoothly, with no backfiring and now the car smoothly hanldes those times when you are cruising along a bit to slowly for the gear your in and want to accelerate and you think to yourself “should I down shift?”.

So if you haven’t changed your plugs in a few years, go do it. It takes 30 minutes and you’ll love the results. Make sure you have the special SAAB tool if you’ve got a Sonett though, or the #1 plug will have you cursing!

Last Wednesday the brakes gave out (gently!) on my ’72 Sonett. It turns out the steel braided line to the left front wheel had been worn through. I ordered a new set of lines from West of Sweden and today they arrived, so I figured I’d be back on the road tomorrow.

Unfortunately its never that easy…

photo:223375998 The good part is that the old brake line came off easily. The bad, and confusing, part is that the brake line looks nothing like the replacement lines. I trust West Of Sweden sent me the right parts, so I can only assume the previous owner came up with some sort of alternative solution.

photo:223375974Here is a close-up of the old brake line and the adapter which was fit into the back of the caliper. Notice the female fittings on the line and the cut in the line on the lower right.

photo:223376020The male fitting on the chassis fits the old brake line, and I can’t imagine how a female fitting would look on the chassis. Also, how is that nut supposed to come off? Its in-set in that channel, so its impossible to get a wrench in there.

photo:223376042Does this back of the caliper. Is this correct? I was concerned the fitting might have been drilled out and had some sort of sleeve fit into it.

Last fall I had some wheels widened so I would be able to fit better tires to my Sonett for autocrossing. I finally got tires on mounted, so now I’m ready to test them out on the car. Read on for more.
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Powdercoat
photo:124283236A few weeks ago a co-worker found a guy for me who was willing to powder coat the wheels for $175. The finish doesn’t come through in the photos very well, but they look great.

Once I had sent the wheels of for finishing, I started shopping for tires. I wanted a tire that was sized 195/50-15 because I decided that would be the best trade off between width and low profile. 205 tires would have been too tall. I selected Hankook Ventus R-S2 Z212 tires because they got a decent review from GRM and unlike the higher-rated Falken’s, they come in the size I wanted. Unfortunately, the Falkens only come in 195.
Mounting 124283243
Once I got the wheels back from powercoat, I took them to a tire shop for mounting and balancing. The owner of the shop said that two of the wheels used minimal weights for balancing, 1 oz and 1.7 oz, but the other two used quite a lot: over 3 oz each. Considering how heavy the wheels are anyway, I’m not too worried.
InstallationThe widened wheels make the already-tricky mounting process even harder. Its just hard to line the lug bolts up with the holes when the wheel itself is something like 4 inches thick. On top of that, the new longer lug bolts have normal “short” heads, not deep heads like normal lugnuts. This makes it hard for a normal socket to put any inward pressure on the bolt, to get it to grab the hub’s threads. My solution was to stuff a wad of paper into the socket, which seemed to work decently.
FitSo far I’ve only mounted one rim on the front of the car. Its pretty clear however that I’m going to have to remove the inside lip on the front fenders, and probably in the back as well. Even with the slightly narrower 195 tires, at full lock while cornering, there would be some pretty serious rubbing going on.

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This is my 1972 Saab Sonett. It is in much better condition than my orange ’74 Sonett. I’ve taken it autocrossing fairly often, and it does fairly well, considering its 4.5” wide tires.

It has some MSS performance modifications from the 80’s, and has been dyno’d at 80 HP.

I figure the best way to make up for the loss of the old website is to start reposting old articles all dressed up and pretty.
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