It wasn’t always assured…..
But after several days with the Melbourne Saab tech experts at Wantirna Automotive, just plugging away in their spare time, the car is now up and running!
I’ve got to admit, I was pretty nervous about this. When I spoke to David about 30 hours ago, things weren’t looking encouraging. The fuel pump housing was mush, the pump itself seized and it looked like almost all of the fuel system would need replacement.
We have replaced the pump with a second hand unit, drained the tank, cleaned out the fuel distributor and various other bits and today the car fired up with no hassles and apparently ran quite well. The gearbox is a little noisy on deceleration but there’s a spare one if need be. I didn’t specifically ask about the turbo, but they didn’t say anything bad about it, either, which is good news.
The clutch, which we feared might need a new master or slave cylinder, received a fresh batch of fluid and the pedal rose of it’s own accord. The clutch worked fine during their brief test drive with no slipping.
The bits that I can recall from the phone conversation earlier today:
- New injectors
- Second-hand fuel pump
- Fuel distributor soaked and cleaned out
- New battery
- All fluids and filters (fuel, oil, air) changed
I’ll be up for all of that plus labour and the towing fee, but it’ll be money well spent.
You see, just freighting the car down here when it’s not running would have cost me around A$1,200. Then there’s the parts, which would have been around $600 more (at least). After all that, I would have had to spend more to do what David’s just done to get the car running.
The cheapest way, by far, to get the car here was to get it running (I would have had that expense anyway) and get a $50 permit to drive the car from Melbourne to home. You can get these permits for unregistered vehicles to be driven to a place of repair and yes, they can be used to take the car interstate.
So now I’m up for the costs for getting it running, a cheap plane and ferry ticket (booked tonight) and I can load all the parts I care to cram into the car and carry them for free!
Once I get the car here, I can assess the condition of the body and see whether it’s going to be worth fixing. If not, I’ve still got access to a 2-door 99EMS that I can use and doing what I’m doing now is still the easiest and cheapest way to get a working engine/gearbox and turbo interior back to Hobart.
Everything’s working out so far. The fact that this car didn’t take too much work to get operational is a very good sign.
I haven’t heard yet how much Dave’s work is going to set me back in money terms. Anyone want to take a guess? Closest to the pin gets a lovely warm glow for the day.
Happy Happy Happy Joy Joy Joy!!!!!
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