Snow and Ice!

Well with all the snow and ice last weekend Nick and I decided it was not worth taking the engine out of the Saab and just stayed in the warm. So now Christmas is here and the Saab engine is still not out, a bit behind schedule but hopefully after all the family stuff is over there may be some time to complete this task before the new year! Ready to order the zero plus kit any day now as well, now that we are close to completing work on the two donor cars there will be space for the kit.

Some more about Trionic

Trionic is the name of the engine management system in the Saabs of this age and our 900 (model often referred to as NG900 or GM900). Its is highly modifiable and the previously mentioned software 'T5suite' allows vitually every parameter to be modified.

Having read the manuals, its looks pretty easy to fix up the settings for the ford gearbox including speed sensor pulse per wheel revolution, gear ratios etc. Also on the site is a schematic for the electronics interface needed to reprogram the ECU, looks pretty easy to make, and we work for an electronics company so plenty of clever people around to help!

Quick pic of the beast

Complicated

This Saab engine is definitely proving to be more complicated than initially expected. The turbo has so many hoses, pipes and connectors its crazy! As well as all the other parts in the engine bay. We have the engine free of all the surrounding parts now though after much work, the drive shafts came undone with a 32mm socket, and so its pretty much ready to drop out now, but its getting dark so we called it a day. The engine will drop out with the front sub frame and come out of the bottom of the engine bay, then we will need to lift the front of the car high enough to get the engine out from underneath, which should be pretty interesting! I'll make sure to get a photo of that for you.

We also need to get the ECU from the car to go with the engine, and maybe one or two other small parts we can think of.

We will hopefully get the engine out friday afternoon i think, as we'll be working all week as usual - so look for an update with some pics then.

Saab progress

After a couple of weekends without working on the car at all, Nick and I have got back to work today and made fair headway on the Saab engine removal. It is however quite complex!

The Saab has a lot of extra parts in the engine bay that are just not present on the Sierra, such as power steering, air con, anti lock brakes and numerous other parts. These are all joined into the engine and filling up the engine bay restricting access. So progress has been slow and steady, rather than rapid.

We also need to be careful to note which parts we take off connect where, so that we can re-attach the parts we need in the kit. Should make some more progress tomorrow, if things go well, then to the point of dropping the engine out!

Its cold and wet

So I've been doing some reading up on Saab info and to work out exactly what we've let ourselves in for.

If you're looking at doing something similar, definitely head over to www.uksaabs.co.uk there's so much info there and they seem like a friendly bunch.

Anyway, I think the following brain dump is a list of stuff that's going to be a pain to sort out/ challenge to get stuck into:

• Saab ECU need speed sensor as it calculates boost on detecting what gear you're in. Sierra doesn't have ABS, so we may have to rig up a toothed wheel and sensor onto the prop, or Burton Power sell electronic speedo sender adaptors for the Type 9 gearbox.
• Clutch - the Saab is 185bhp, and while the Zero is a light car, it's stil a lot for the old 2.3 Sierra plate to deal with. Yukspeed and SBDevelopments do uprated plates if needed.
  
• Engine size, I've now heard a lot of 'this engine is very tall' stories, fingers crossed the expected bonnet bulge will look more 'purposeful' than 'upturned bathtub'.
• Custom engine mounts - I'd best brush off the welder...
• Power Steering and Air Con will be ditched so will need an idler pulley or 2 and brackets to retain belt tension.
• 'Sticky-out bits' i.e. Manifolds, turbo, alternator, etc; all these could get in the way of chassis rails, steering column etc.
• Fuel tank to suit fuel injection i.e. has a return inlet.
  

And I'm sure a lot more!

Exeter Kit Car Show

Nick went to the last Kit Car show of the season last week, in Exeter. GBS were there, as were MEV who had an excellent display of cars in show but their skeleton designs and the horrendous rain last weekend must harm their sales potential a bit! The weather gear for the Zero looks very appealing.

On display outside was this awesome looking 7, not sure what kit it was but it was sporting what looked like a Honda S2000 engine...  Of interest to us is the fact that it's a tall engine, as the Saab lump is supposed to be, so the builder had made a bonnet bulge and has clearly made an excellent job of it.

Saab

After the rapid progress on the Sierra initially, things with the Saab are going to be a little slow starting due to other weekend commitments this weekend and next, such as a stag weekend away! So we have planned to take the engine out of the Saab during the second weekend in Dec.

In the mean time I've been keeping my eye on a gearbox housing on ebay that Nick has determined will mate the Saab engine to the Sierra gearbox. A ebay seller keeps putting new ones up but they keep selling for £130 - £140. Which is slightly more than the £100 psychological barrier I have in my mind for buying parts! But I'll have to get one at some point, maybe looking for a second hand one else where might be another option. Its not critical to get it just yet though.

Next major progress update will be during second weekend of Dec.

Battery

I kept the battery from the Sierra when we scrapped it to try in the Saab, just to check there is nothing else preventing it starting apart from the flat battery. After some time bodging the circular cable ends from the Saab onto the square terminals on the Sierra battery the Saab started first time! So thats good news, I won't need to jump start it when we are ready to move it to Nick's garage for engine removal.

Sierra work complete

Nick and I took the day off work today to get the Sierra finished off, so we have made excellent progress today.

We started the day by getting hold of an engine crane:

Then we got cracking on the Sierra. We removed all the pipes, wires etc connecting the engine and gearbox to the car bofore lifting the whole assembly out with the crane. The engine came out fairly easily with the crane:

Once the engine was out, we took the gearbox off, which we plan to use, before dumping the engine back inside the car on the passenger seat, as looking around it doesn't seem like engines sell for anything.

Then it was just the final few parts from the front wheels and brakes to take off and put with the prop shaft and we had finished taking all the parts off the Sierra! Woot!

After much tidying up, labelling of parts and sorting everything out, we had all the parts to be scrapped in the Sierra and everything we wanted to keep organised. The car looked a little sad with no wheels and all the parts dumped inside:

A quick call to a local scrap merchant and they came down with a small truck with crane on it to plonk our dead Sierra on the back of it. It was all over surprisingly quickly, we had taken all the parts we needed from the Sierra in only 2 full days work on the car. The next task is taking the engine out of the Saab, but that's not going to be started for over a week yet...

Work begins!

Finally a bit of sunshine and therefore Nick and I made lots of progress made on taking apart the sierra today! Nick hard at work:

A quick summary of what we have done today:

• Loosened the drive shaft and prop shaft nuts before jacking it up.
• Took off the exhaust system (its almost new condition so going to try and ebay it).
• Took off the hand brake cable.
• Undid the top of the rear shock absorbers.
• Cut the rear brake lines.
• Undid all the mounts that bolted the rear subframe onto the car.
• Then the whole of the rear subframe could be lowered and slid out from the car:

The diff, drive shafts and rear brakes were then all easy to access and remove. After that we started on the inside:

• Removed the handbrake.
• Took the steering wheel, dash and indicator stalks etc out.
• Removed the steering column.

Having initially been very doubtful about an article where two (semi professional) guys stripped all the parts needed from a sierra for a kit car in only 6 hours, i can now believe that might be done! As we are at least half way there, having spent about 6 hours working on it today, and we are relative novices.

I'm going to buy an engine crane tomorrow to lift the car up high enough so that we can slide the front subframe out once we unbolt that. We will need one soon anyway for getting the engine out of the Saab. I looked at getting one from ebay, but the prices go almost as high as a new crane, so might as well buy new. I am going to pick one up from a place near here that does them new at a good price.

Hopefully we will find some time this week to get the front subframe out...

Clutch plate

In the post today came a clutch plate that I bought off ebay, old ford stock, from a 2.3 diesel sierra, this should be the right size to interface with the engine from the saab and along with some other parts we are looking at should allow the saab engine and sierra gearbox to mate together. Won't know for certain though until we get everything apart. Here is a quick pic of the clutch that came today:

Saab

Nick and I went and picked up the Saab this morning that I agreed to buy the other day. Always interesting seeing a car you have already agreed to buy but at £300 its not that big of an investment. The seller had a little trouble starting the engine, as the battery was dead, but with some jump leads it started, and the engine sounds pretty good. Driving it back home the engine was smooth and powerful when the turbo kicked in, just what we want! The gearbox on it was pretty poor though, difficult to get into each gear and impossible to get in reverse, but I knew that when i bought it. Battery is not much use either, not enough power to restart the engine when I got home. Here is a pic of it:

We also bought a few bits an pieces yesterday so we are now ready to start work on the sierra, the main item we needed was some axle stands to put the car on while we take the transmission out, and a 41mm socket to get the drive shafts out. Should be starting work today or tomorrow, though its a little weather dependant as its raining a lot at the moment and we will be taking the sierra apart outside in front of Nick's garage.

Looking forward to getting cracking on the real work!

Engine choices

As I said in my last post Nick and I decided that a turbo charged engine was the way forward. However where this engine would come from remained a bit of a question mark in our planning for the Zero.

The first thought was the engine from a Nissan 200SX, which is a 1.8L turbo with quite a lot of horse power. The other advantage to using this as the engine donor car is that it is a rear wheel drive car, so we could take both the engine and gearbox and just join it to the Sierra transmission at the drive shaft - relatively simple! However when looking to purchase an old 200SX with a decent engine we discovered a major issue, these cars are seriously in demand! Likely for people keen on the Drift scene, and car modding, as this is one of only a few small rear wheel drive sporty cars that can be had for reasonable money. Even a 20 year old 200SX with no MOT and not run for a year would command £600+ on ebay.

So we went back to the drawing board, and have come up with another option - a Saab 900. These have a 2.0L turbo, with more horse power than the Nissan, so that's a good start. The price was also very attractive, with a ~15 year old Saab with MOT and good working order around £400 on ebay. The bad news is that this is a front wheel drive car, so it will need turning round to work in a Zero. A bit of research by Nick turned up that you can buy adapter plates to mate the '94-onwards Saab engine onto a Sierra gearbox, which we would have from the other donor car. Obviously this is a more work and there are some additional costs involved in this compared to using a full engine and gearbox assembly. But as a Saab 900 is so cheap initially, it should still be cheaper than a 200sx in total, while also giving a more powerful engine, that is significantly younger and so should have more life in it!

So with that decision made, I bought a Saab 900 today! I have had my eye on it for a week or two now, its a 1996 2.0L turbo with an MOT, but the reverse gear is apparently very difficult to engage. But I don't plan to use the gearbox, so not a problem for me. So I've managed to pick it up for £300! Bargain! I'll be picking it up on Saturday!

Here is a pic of it from the internet, I'll post a better one when I get the car.

Sierra bought!

I won an ebay auction for an old Sierra for the princely sum of £250! While searching for cheap cars I've decided that it seems that ebay is one of the best places to pick them up, autotrader etc tends to have higher value cars on it, but you probably already knew that.

Nick and I drove over to pick up the car a couple of days ago. Here is me with my new purchase:

The Sierra is a 1.6 so not the most powerful, but we aren't going to use the engine so that is no problem. It has an MOT so it was easy to get it home unlike some of the cars on ebay. The car was smooth at speed, no vibrations or strange noises to suggest the transmission might have issues, which is great. There is the occasional crunch when putting it into third gear though, which maybe an issue if we end up using the gearbox, but that is tied into the engine choice that is still to be made.

Now we have the first donor car, the actual hands on work can begin soon! Exciting stuff!

The Plan

Nick and I have been talking about and planning the build for about the last 6 months. Starting in the Spring when we went to a kit car show, to have a look over the types of car available and to get an idea of the price etc. The Zero seemed to be one of the cheapest kit cars around, and also one of the best looking, so its not a big surprise that after some more investigation we eventually settled on building a Zero.

The next thing to plan was the donor car for the Zero. The kit is based upon a Sierra, so that is almost a given as the donor car, however I was not keen on the idea of the old Sierra engine. We looked at many different options from newer ford zetec engines, to bike engines, to larger engines. We have decided on a fairly small (1.8 - 2L) turbo charged engine, as this should fit in the chassis without too many mods, be significantly more powerful than a sierra engine and not be crazy loud / high revs like a bike engine. We have not made the final decision on which car to get this engine from yet, the two front runners are a Nissan 200sx and a Saab 900. I'll go into more detail on this decision in another post soon.

I've set myself a target budget of around £5,000 and hopefully we won't go too much over that. I think it would be tough to make the car for less than that without cutting quite a few corners. I'll let you know how we get on keeping to that budget!

So now we have come to the point where the actual build starts. The basic plan is to get hold of the Sierra donor car and take the transmission etc that we need from it out, then get rid of the rest of the car. Then we will take the engine out of the engine donor car and get rid of the rest of that car. Finally we will get the Zero plus kit (comes with more than just the basic kit parts, so less of the extras to worry about) and put it together with the donor parts we have. Ideally you would like to take the parts off the cars and put them straight into the kit car, but unfortunately space contraints mean that having more than 1 car in pieces at once is not really a possibility.

Start

So this is the start of my Zero kit car build diary! I thought I would make this diary to document what I plan to do, how it all turns out and the adventures on the way...

I'm planning to make a Zero kit car ( http://www.zerokits.com/ ) with my friend Nick over approx the next 12months. I'm going to supply the funds and enthusiasm, while Nick will supply most of the technical expertise.

Hopefully the information here can help other people with their build of a Zero in the future.