Not sure if this is welcome here - The DadWagon.

[Atterz]

Hello fellow Pistonheads,
Well having put this off for ages I think its about time that I created a project thread for my 9-3. Having discussed with the kind people on the forum I decided that I would purchase the 2.8t over the 2.0t, I hadn't had a petrol turbo and I certainly hadn’t had a 6 cylinder yet, being 22 the insurance had always been extortionate. However, a few quotes later and the decision was made.

The car at the dealers -



After checking it over and finding nothing immediately at fault I managed to obtain the car with 6 months tax, unfortunately I couldn’t wangle the full £475 for the year. Driving the car home I realised that at lower revs it was suffering with a misfire, not ideal and considering the economy I was rather worried I would have to travel back to Colchester in order to have the fault diagnosed.
Thankfully, and in very good will they paid for spark plugs which I fitted myself (breaking brittle plastic pipes at the same time). This cured the issue and I could enjoy the car.
This later ended up being a coil on cylinder 5(The most awkward to get to) so this was also changed.





The car then performed admirably on its journey back to where I live in South Wales, it impressed me greatly with the overtaking ability I had missed with the Focus. Especially helpful on the lanes when nipping past slow moving traffic can cut a journey time in half! It was also introduced to my track car, the 306 Rallye.





A few months then passed as I was away galavanting abroad, obtaining a tan etc. Although in this time, and with many hours of boredom, and an internet connection... Well we all know where this is going. I purchased a few things for the Saab. I found, as many other people have, that this engine and setup runs incredibly hot underneath the bonnet. The turbocharger is very high in the bay, this combined with the catalytic converter being immediately after the turbo and still very much in the may means that heat becomes trapped. As before mentioned, this made things brittle. This had resulted in a cracked coolant tank and perished hoses among other things. A picture of the standard bay is below.



As you can see, things are tight!

My aim therefore was to mitigate heat inside the engine bay, this being to increase the durability of the various components within and also to hopefully lower charge temperatures and increase efficiency of the engine. My plans were the following.
-Decatted downpipe / Heatwrapped, removing the Cat which stores a lot of heat, and hopefully reducing restriction to help turbo spool.
-Turbo blanket, again, keeping heat inside the exhaust system, hopefully transferring more energy to the turbine.
-New coolant tank with heat reflective tape, to replace the cracked tank and the tape in order to hopefully reflect the radiant heat from the exhaust and prevent the tank from cracking again.
-Larger inter cooler, easily explained, larger forward mounted intercooler from an Evo 8 in order to lower charge temperatures in preparation for remapping.
-Cone filter with heat proofed custom air box, I will openly admit here that this is purely for noise as the car is very muted as standard.

I will allow the pictures below to document the fitting of before mentioned parts :-
















“Development” and production of the air box and a picture of the new coolant tank.










Installation of the intercooler.


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Installation of the downpipe.

I also took the time to clean up and paint the diffuser section as it had badly faded.





And here is the engine bay after fitting of all parts, along with a few arty shots. (Note I have also painted the turbo heat shield with VHT paint.)

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After performing this I installed the map that had been sent to me by John Williams of JZW tuning, of whom is based in the USA and is responsibly for many high powered Saabs, Opels, BMWs etc. This is technically classed as the Stage 3+ map and is fairly brutal, the torque is amazing, as is the torque steer. But considering it is FWD it puts the power down very well. 60-100 Is timed at 5.3 Seconds. So quite swift.

Below is the dyno graph from his website, for those interested.


I shall stop talking now and just post the pictures, I have painted the callipers gold, carbon wrapped the interior, installed interior LEDs and finally attached my Pistonheads smiley .




Cleaning with peanut butter, yes it really does seem to work!






















The final one being my car at the Pendragon meet on Saturday morning, sat next to something a fair bit more expensive!

If you made it this far, thank you for looking!
James.

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So anyway a few more pictures, today me and my friend Jay (it was mostly him to be fair!) detailed the car.
Began with a citrus pre-wash, two bucket wash, clay bar(removed a lot of contaminants!), polished with Menzerna and then finished with Bilt hamber auto balm. I am extremely pleased with how everything has came up especially the headlights/badges which all seem to fade on older, neglected Saabs!

Anyway, here goes :-








Before.








During.










After




And then when i got home, well it rained so here is the obligatory "bead" shots!

Cheers all.