71' SAAB Sonett III, or "Learning Everything the Hard Way"

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Hence my leaking problem I surmise. I have no such barb on my Clutch master so I tried to make a hose clamp work for me. The brake MC does have a small one, and as such I don't think was leaking as badly. The reservoirs weren't leaking at all, beauty of gravity  there, plus they have small barbs. The only reason I'm going to replace the reservoirs is to have a one with an AN fitting ready to go.

I considered modifying the OE reservoirs to accept an AN fitting in some way but I'd have spent as much on the parts to do that as brand new aluminum/chinesium reservoirs.

I don't mind repeating myself:

Great work on a weird/obscure gem. Carry on.

Parts arrive and plans go into action. But first the work going on tangentially related. I cleaned back all the paint and primer to bare metal on the pan to attack the rust. This process also took out some factory seam sealing so that needed to be replaced. Mild problem: my tube of seam sealer - despite my best efforts- had hardened at the tip so I had to tear into it to get at the grey gooey goodness... and then spread it with my fingers. It was messy.

Clean up the excess a little bit and let the sealer dry, then paint over with rust converter. I'll topcoat this with some etch-primer, then the epoxy chassis paint.

But now onto the main event. Over-engineering the brake and clutch master cylinder reservoir junction. For any sane logical person a roll of the correct hose and some spring clips would have been the order of the day. Since a sane and logical person wouldn't have bought a Sonett as a freshman in college I will not be doing that.

First the offending master cylinder. Notice all the crystallized brake fluid all over the cap. I also find the giant rubber washer a weird choice, but that's correct for whatever reason.

Remove the lid with some channel-locks, and put it in the vice.

Now the scary point of no return when modifying hard to find factory parts. Needs must and all that. So I unceremoniously cut off the top with a hack saw and drilled out the inlet. Be sure to not have a drill press and not double check your drill bit sizes so you end up drilling slightly wobbly slightly too big of holes for your tap.

Now that I had a slightly large hole, I proceed to tap it 3/8-24 to take the new -3 AN bulkhead fitting.

You know you've done it right when the threads are nice and small and there are spots devoid of defined threads. That's what they make thread sealant for right?

Cleaned the oil out of the newly threaded hole, spread on a wholey inappropriate amount of thread sealer, and threaded in the new bulkhead fitting.

Tighten on the jam nut from the other side just for good measure.

It worked out to be basically the perfect length as a bulkhead fitting. Just enough thread for the jam nut.

I did make sure to measure the cap, cylinder, and fitting before I began this whole process to make sure once it was passed through the cap the AN fitting wouldn't hit the body of the cylinder and prevent the lid for reinstalling properly or anything else silly. I've got almost an inch of clearance so it should be fine. The thread sealant says it wants 72 hours to cure, which is fine since the reservoirs haven't shown up yet and I still need to finish painting the bottom pan.

Tomorrow I should get to finish up the painting, and do the AN conversion to the brake master. That should be a little more interesting since that lid isn't a big thick cast piece like the clutch. It's just a stamped sheet metal lid. The jam nut will earn its keep and may even need some washers. I expect to need to trim some length off the bulkhead fitting too. Stay tuned.

Well the brake master cylinder actually ended up being about as painless as the clutch. Same program, start with crusty disgusting master cylinder:

Cut off the inlet tube and drill out to size.

Pointlessly run a tap through the sheet metal lid. Slather the -3 fitting in thread sealant and twist it in.

Tighten down the locking nut and prepare to re-attach the top. I was worried the AN fitting would need to be shortened to fit inside the body of the master cylinder since the reservoir section of the brake master is much shorter than the clutch. However kinda squinting at it, measuring everything, it seemed like it would fit, and it did!

After putting the gasket back on the lid I did discover a slight problem.

Gasket extends quite a ways into the body of the reservoir, and actually hits the locking nut. Easy fix, trim a tiny notch out of the gasket and problem solved.

Reassembled both clutch and brake master cylinders, cleaned them up, now they're ready to go back in the car.

Well as of the 10th I'm officially a college graduate, but in more important news that means I now can have a more regular schedule and that means make some dedicated SAAB time.

Since the last update I haven't really had a chance to spend more than a couple hours at a time in the garage but I have got some things accomplished.

New dipstick tube installed, slightly modified Ford Smallblock dipstick tube.  I'll need to cut down and re-stamp the actual dipstick since at the moment it probably wraps around the pan twice. My friend suggested I go extreme next level and stamp it low and high cold on on one side, and hot on the other.

Installed new rear main seal and pilot bushing, as well as repainting the back end of the motor.

SAAB was smart enough to have three threaded holes on the side of the block in outriggers. These as far as I can tell are for the sole purpose of holding the engine sideways on a stand, or perhaps for fixturing during manufacture. Makes working on the back of the motor a whole lot easier.

The master cylinders are reinstalled, new brake lines are bent, flared, and installed waiting on bleeding. Installation aided by making my own 3/8" line wrench with a hack saw and the death-wheel.

Small rant: why does nobody really make these kind of fittings anymore?

It's what the factory used, but the only ones I could find came from amazon for $10 for a pack of 4. I really didn't want to do male caliper bulkhead fitting -> double female union -> male like everyone seems to in this situation. I don't have a good explanation for this.

New Chinese reservoirs arrived. Their eBay listing claimed they were "100% billet aluminum", which I assumed meant a maybe billet lid, or bung for the fitting, but no. The actual whole reservoir was cut from a single piece of aluminum. I don't really know WHY they would do it that way but, hey it was 13$ shipped.

Even has the little brake reservoir rubber boot on the lid. Pretty happy with what I ended up with for the price. We will see how that changes when it leaks. I was preemptive on that and removed the fitting, slathered in thread sealer, reinstalled.

Approaching putting the engine back in the car. Exciting stuff.

I've been following this thread off-and-on for a while, and registered just so I could post in it.

Long-time Saab junkie here, former Sonett III owner, etc., and finally a current Sonett III owner again. Seeing this thread inspired me to go looking for another one, and I picked up a pair of them last summer for $500 and finally will have space in the garage next weekend to bring the first one home. Unfortunately, neither one of them is in quite as good a shape as your starting point was, but one of them at least will be able to make it back on the road with no problem. (The other one might be too far gone, requiring a tube frame chassis or other similar ground-up solution. Not sure yet.) 

I'll be starting my own thread on it soon enough.

Keep up the good work on yours! It'll be solid inspiration for my own project.

In reply to LT_Rusty :

Awesome! I'll keep an eye out for the thread and best of luck. They're neat little cars if a little quirky. If you need any information on anything I've had hands on just about every part of the car and have binders and binders of printed out old articles and guides for maintaining, restoring, and repairing the Sonett. It may not be the correct way, but I'll probably know some way of helping out. With two cars to pull parts from I doubt you'll need many parts but if you do let me know and I can rummage around in my bins if I think I've got it.

If you don't have his number yet Mark Ashcraft is THE Sonett guy, he's on here as @Subrew. Just google "Ashcraft+SAAB" and you'll find his PDF parts catalog.  It has some good stuff, but also some stuff that's paying premium for him doing the legwork on research and making sure it fits. It is available elsewhere for cheaper, if you know how and where to look.

I'm currently stuck working on other projects that are living in borrowed space so they have priority at the moment, but hopefully I can get back to the SAAB soon. The downsides to not having a house/land.

In reply to Medchin :

I've known of the Ashcrafts, pere et fils, for decades now. Never met or spoke to them, but I had some of their goodies (along with plenty of Jack Lawrence's stuff from MSS) on my previous Sonett. I've got the numbers saved in my phone, but somehow I never seem to be able to get hold of them. For almost a year now I've called, left voice mail, and emailed, and somehow I never get any response. It's almost like they don't want me to throw money at them or something.  Just as a starter I need to get the sheet metal book from them, and then go from there for mechanical parts once I get all the welding done in the chassis. There's a lot of stuff in their catalog that I've got the budget for over the next year, but it doesn't mean a thing if they don't ever answer the phone.

WOW that is one clean Sonett! My father was the original owner of a 1970 Sonett III and he held onto it until about 2 years ago. I actually drove it as my daily for a bit back in 1988. The problem was that it had the typical rust any of these in the northeast would have. Before he got rid of it he offered it to me and I considered bringing it back to life but looking into I found that most of the chasis was rusted. 

One resource I found that might be helpful to you is a parts interchange that lists things from other cars that work on the Sonett.

http://www.vsaab.com/PartsBin/partsource.htm

Good luck. I'll be checking progress.

Marc