Friday, August 29, 2008

Week 4 - The Special Olympics of Wrenching

Week four turned into the LeMons version of the Special Olympics. With only 2-3 hours alloted for the night, we spent well over an hour getting the car up on jack stands. Thanks to Lars Koster (no, unfortunately he's not Svedish), we got jack stands that are about 4' tall. I think they built the Pyramids with less engineering than what Dave and I used to get this POS up.

Week 3, for those of you wondering and counting, was spent producing a chemical spill worthy of the Exxon Valdez in the Croker driveway. We spent 2 hours degreasing the engine bay and killing small Otters in Galveston Bay.



Items accomplished this week:
- removed shocks and springs (no struts). We managed not to kill ourselves (yet) with compressing the spring. After the horrific jacking experience, you never know.

- removed brake calipers and brake pads. Our manual showed some manly Swede removing the brake pads with his manly Swede finger tips. We had to use manly American hammers and screw drivers. The rotors are pretty crappy on inspection.

- confirmed lack of anti-roll bar.

- removed heater from car, and looped coolent lines. When the car has a coolent leak, we'll know where to look first.

- collectively came to the realization that we have a lot of work to do before our welding weekend in Dallas.


This first picture is a testament to the engineering talents coming out of UT. Just look at the Slaab. Its actually ON the jack stands:



Calling Mr. DeGreaser....Mr. Degreaser...please come to aisle 2:




Source of future coolent leak:



Look Ma...no sway bars (and no CV joints either)

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

WEEK 2 - THE CAR IS GETTING LIGHTER

Well, its a little lighter anyway. This car is in serious need of a lowering kit. Stay tuned on that front. Week 2 included some new tools, including a six pack of Becks beer. I think it helped in our workmanship tonight.

Items accomplished this week:
- removed all remaining elements of the interior, including all a/c related parts, heater parts (apart from heater radiator), seats, carpet, and structural rigidity.
- removed compressor, condensor, hoses and anything else on the air conditioning system.
- started car to make sure it still runs after ravaging the wiring harness.

Couple of things to note in the pictures below
1) there is now a HUGE hole in the firewall that needs to be plugged as part of our welding work.
2) seat height. You'll notice we're sitting...uhh...a little low. We need to weld another brace in the car to mount the OMG seat.
3) oil leaks - we have potentially a head gasket leak. You would think we're down on power if it leaks, but then again, we only have 116hp to start with.
4) the shift lever, commonly called the shit lever, pulls straight up and out of the housing. that will be fun in turn 4.

Work for next week - CV joints and springs!












This is a picture of the floor of the car where the seat goes...we need another cross brace here to mount the seat.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Lemon Hauler

The car might be a lemon (and ugly)...but we will be arriving in style. Just imagine the crowds gathering around the trailer when the Svedish race car crackles to life inside, 4 banger hitting on all 3 cylinders, blowing smoke and oil out the tail pipe. They'll be anxiously expecting a race car, but sadly, will be blinded by the site a Slaab.

The Lemon Transporter is below:



Week 1 - Lemon Build

The first week of the Lemon is done, and we achieved to make the 1982 Saab look like a 1982 Slaab. Things accomplished this week:

1) removed dashboard, including probably many wires and vacuum hoses which will prove to be critical later.
2) removed a Bose-esque Sony cassette player (with digital read out)
3) removed everything on the two doors apart from the door itself, which will make driving it to Dallas even more fun.
4) removed all interior parts behind the front seats
5) removed all exterior trim pieces due to aerodynamic drag. Well, at the minimum, they were ugly.
6) removed clamshell hood, which opens backwards anyways to expose an engine bay that has a backwards engine.
7) removed half of heater system. We questioned whether this was a good call afterwards, which simply means that the other half is coming out because we'll never be able to reconstruct this Swedish torture device again.

Pictures below. Note sweaty Lemons. It was muggy. Also note the oil drips underneath the Slaab. More to follow on that I'm sure when we reconvene to work on the actual go-fast(er) parts.






Lemon Wars - A New Hope

We've hijacked the Croker Family Blog!!! Its official. The Svedish Slaabs were accepted into the Houston 24 Hours of Lemons race. The chosen weapon of the Slaabs is none other than a Swedish missile (albeit a 116 hp missile...really more like a Swedish Hot Air Balloon). Below is a picture of our car, pre-Lemon modification.