So I've decided to participate in National Solo Album Month, (or NaSoAlMo, one of the worst acronyms ever). For real this time. Whatever I get I'm gonna publish on youtube at the least. I grabbed a solo moniker for this specifically (so I don't have to be stuck with it if the end product sucks). So all progress and bits go up on the Elk Bird Stone soundcloud page. I actually started working on bits last night (totally cheating) and there's some stuff up there now. Also went camping with the lady. Along the way there was a pit stop where all the fancy cars and motorcycles going up the 2 take a rest. There were Porsches, Skylines, Ducatis and all sorts of cool stuff. I was most intrigued by the mint Saab Sonett III though:
I, too, am often intrigued by Saab Sonetts. My father has one. he bought it off a friend of mine when I was in high school. There are a few things you should consider about Saab Sonetts. 1) They have all the chassis rigidity you would expect from a fiberglass car. 2) Due to the mechanical nature of the headlight retractor, people over 5'10 have a choice between "seeing at night" and "shifting at night." The lever pulls out far enough that it captures your left knee after dark, making it difficult to actuate the clutch. 3) It's powered by a Taunus V4. Worse, it's powered by V1.0 Taunus V4, which were leftover engines from the failed Ford Cardinal project, which were sold to Saab when Ford Industrial decided they would make shitty tractor engines. 4) I mean, it's powered by a failed tractor engine. It's also a 60 degree V4, which any fan of engines will tell you is going to require one mammer-jammer of a counterbalance shaft to keep the fucker from rattling itself apart. You may notice in this example that the counterbalance shaft gear has no teeth on it. This is due to the fact that Ford, in their infinite wisdom, determined that a tractor engine was not likely to experience many abrupt throttle changes and that the best isolation would be provided by making the counterbalance shaft gear out of phenolic. 5) Which, okay, on a tractor it probably doesn't. On a 1700lb 2-seater sports car? I personally have stripped the teeth off that gear with one spirited stoplight launch. It feels a lot like all of a sudden you're driving an unbalanced V4. Because you are. 6) We acquired the Sonett when we already had 2 96s with 5 spare engines because you nuke that gear so often that it's easier to pull an engine, put a freshy in, tear down the old engine and get it ready for the next time you cook off that gear. Which is so hard to come by it's easier to buy four or five dead Saabs at a time. 7) except getting the mill out of a Sonett means pulling the entire front clip, which takes the better part of the morning. At least with a 96 the hood comes off in 10 minutes. We could get the engines out of a 96 and back in again in a couple hours. Sonett? That was a weekend, minimum, and if you stopped to watch Star Trek and drink a beer you were finishing in the dark. 8) and if you start considering engine swaps, remember that your only real choice is Subaru, which is too wide for the engine bay, but you can get away with a Mazda 13B, but now you need a new transmission because that ridiculous little 4-on-the-column freewheeler they stole from the 96 is going to nuke at the first application of horsepower so now you're looking at a Subaru transmission and a Mazda rotary and with the amount of effort you're putting forth you could just, you know, buy something that doesn't suck. Go with god.
I wish I knew some of those details when I saw that thing; I would have asked more about it. The owner (first and only) was there: She's the old lady checking out the engine. I seem to recall her saying it was all OG, but I wonder about that counterbalance shaft gear now. I saw her launch it from the lot. There seemed to be some pretty respectable pep in that car. Going downhill at least.
We kept meaning to get some c-shaft gears cut out of 4130, fully knowing they'd be buzzy, heinous, loud little things. I'm pretty sure we looked at sneaking a Capri V6 into it as well, but we would have had to completely revise the radiator mounts. I think my dad lost all interest in doing anything with the car about the time he bought a Saturn SL2, which says a lot about the driving experience. Nonetheless, I know where a traffic cone orange one is, that doesn't work at the moment. I have no idea if my dad would be willing to part with the stupid thing, though.