So apparently I'm going to have a Saab project

Well, it took a bit longer than planned, but the transmission and inner driveshaft are back together. There are three cover plates on the transmission: two on the right side (one of which houses the dipstick guide tube), and one at the back (which gives access to the differential). Each inner driveshaft has its own carrier, so in order to reseal the whole thing all you're looking at five different parts that have to come out, get cleaned, and reinstalled with new gaskets (in the case of the plates) or O-rings (in the case of the driveshaft carriers). It's not difficult, but it is tedious, and access to some bolts is not great, which means lots of stretching and twisting.

The plates were no real issue, but the right side inner driveshaft - the reason for this whole project, for reasons that will be apparent momentarily - was a bit uncooperative. Six bolts hold it in, after which it must be twisted out around the inconveniently-placed downpipe. I got it out OK, albeit after a bit of prying and mild swearing, and took it apart. The old inner seal did not want to leave, so I carefully cut most of the way through it with a Dremel, after which prying it out was easy. The new seal went in OK, but when I popped the new inner driver in the bearing (which was fine and is not being replaced) became unseated, meaning I couldn't get the retaining circlip on it. This was last night, and as I was already fairly tired, I left it for this morning.

The old driver had been damaged by a failed tripod bearing, caused by an apparent lack of lubrication. It was so dry in there I swear it was assembled without lubrication at some point. Each leg of the tripod bearing is supposed to run in a smooth channel with two smooth surfaces. When it fails one side of each channel starts to cup, leading to vibration on acceleration. You can see the failed tripod bearing in an earlier post, and here's what it did. The cupping is visible directly below the red line. It's bad.

Having thought about it last night, and confirming my suspicions with some online research, I headed out to Lowe's to find some sort of pipe I could use as a drift to reseat the bearing. For anyone who's in this situation, two 1" PVC couplers work perfectly. Stacked on the bearing and held in alignment by the driveshaft, a block of wood on top and a few shots with a hammer and the bearing sat down. Clip on, new outer O-ring seal in place, and it was back in the car without drama. Here is the assembled unit waiting to be reinstalled.

I have to say that my Milwaukee electric ratchet made this whole job so much more pleasant. Whoever it was on this forum who turned me on to this thing, thank you.

So now I'm just waiting for a new wheel bearing and I can button up the front end (new shocks will go in at the same time - the old ones had to be cut out). Then it's on to the rear and welding up the failed right side shock mount.

Work and weather have been most uncooperative in allowing me to work on the Saab lately, but I did manage to complete a small job. I knew the valve cover needed replacing - near-Exxon Valdez levels of leakage around the entire perimeter were evident. As I didn't have time to deal with bigger things, I figured I'd get this taken care of. I pulled the cover and discovered a contributory factor to the leaks: whoever did this job the last time seems to have used the better part of a tube of black RTV, in addition to the gasket. The stuff oozed everywhere. All around the cover, on both sides of the gasket, the stuff was omnipresent. It took a couple hours of meticulous cleaning to relieve both cover and head of the extraneous goop.

On the plus side, the oily bits revealed were very clean:

I wire-brushed and pressure-washed the valve cover to remove the nasty, flaking factory paint, or at least the part of it that would leave without undue effort. I'm all for aesthetics, but on this sort of project I'm not going to bust my hump getting non-critical parts spotless. With the worse of it gone, I grabbed some paint from my bin of random spray cans: Duplicolor red engine paint, and Rustoleum hammered black. A few quick coats, dry for a day, and then install the gasket with a few small dabs of RTV to hold it in place in the cover. This afternoon I popped it on the engine, adding additional RTV where the manual said it was required. And here is the gaudy result of my efforts:

I'm sure I've got at least another 5hp now.

Progress has been made. I finally had a day to work on the car, so I dove into trying to get the front end put back together. This entailed replacing the right wheel bearing, installing the rebuilt right axle, getting the front shocks in, and replacing the sway bar bushings and end links.

I popped the steering knuckle off and started into the bearing. The hub came off easily, but the bearing resisted (minus the inner race, which came off on the hub and was subsequently removed). Lacking a press, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and took the whole thing to a local shop, who agreed to press in the new bearing.

While I waited, took care of the sway bar bits, as well as changing the oil and filter, the air filter, and (mostly) refilling the transmission. The trans is listed as holding ~2.5qts of oil, but apparently when you pull the covers off it drains more than when you just pull the plug, as 3qts didn't even get me to the MIN mark on the dipstick (I love that the manual trans has a dipstick). As I decided to try Honda MTF, and I only order 3qts, I'll have to finish that job when I get more oil.

Mid-afternoon the shop called that bearing was in, so I ran down and grabbed it. $45 was a small price to pay for not having to fight with it (and probably lose). I quickly installed it, torqued everything, and then mounted the front shocks. After much deliberation, I opted for the cheap KYB Excel-Gs, which I can only hope will be marginally competent; I was going to try the Gas-A-Justs, but I read too many reports of them being unduly harsh.

So with the front buttoned up, I can finally move to the back and get the blown shock mount repaired. I have a preformed patch to weld it, so I'm hoping it won't be terrible. Once that's in, new pads and rotors will go on in the rear and the brake system will be flushed.

Then it's on to the cooling system. The brass radiator is showing some corrosion, so I found a Nissens aluminum replacement, along with new hoses, an electric fan switch, and a thermostat. After that I think we're getting pretty close to getting on the road, barring any new discoveries. Plenty of work to do once it's road-worthy, but being able to drive it is the goalpost I'm aiming at right now.

I’ll be curious to learn what you think of those KYB shocks.  I put them on my VW, but that car is nowhere close to being roadworthy.

Also- how do the 4x10 speakers sound?  I wonder if technology has made them better than they used to be 30 years ago.

I have a feeling the KYBs will be notable for their lack of distinctive character. I'm used to Bilsteins (I've had them on every car I've owned in the last 12 years or so, and in my 2002 for 20+); I expect the KYBs will be adequate, but hardly sporting. But they were cheap (like $12/corner after the $40 rebate) and better than the old shocks that were on there. If they keep things from bouncing around too much for a while I'll be satisfied.

The 4x10s are fine. I'm not much of an audiophile, but they're clear and decent. I think the large rear speakers under that massive hatch will probably do a good job of filling the space evenly. I'm quite sure they're a lot better than the stock very basic paper-cone Saab units were even new; I'll never know how much better, since the originals were dead by the time I got the car. I just wanted something in there that I didn't really have to worry about, so bolting in the same size as the factory used made life easier.

Got in some time on the car today. My plan was to get my funky 80s electronic multi-gauge installed, which entailed getting the oil pressure and temperature senders in place, installing the wiring harness I built up earlier, tapping power and interior light (with dimming) somewhere under the dash, and planting the gauge display on the column.

Frankly the biggest issue was dropping the knee bolster to get access to the grommet on the left corner of the firewall that I wanted to run the wiring through. For those unfamiliar, the bolster runs the full width of the dash and requires some interesting contortions and feats of strength to remove and reinstall. Among the things that need to come out is the center console, in which I discovered this:

I figure this offsets the cost of the car by about 0.6%. I'm calling it a win.

Once I had the bolster out the wiring was pretty straightforward. At the same time I ran in wiring through the same grommet for my driving lights, which will come later - I didn't want to have to pull this thing again anytime soon.

I also had easy access to the central locking relay. The central locking didn't work, and the fuse was missing, which suggested it had been an issue before. I pulled the relay guts, installed a fuse, and lo and behold it worked. Relay clicked, doors and hatch locked and unlocked in unison. Popped the cover back on and reinstalled. I would be calling this a win except that it stopped working when I went to lock up the car after I was done. At least I can get back at the relay without pulling the bolster.

The sending units were cobbled together with adapters and a brass T fitting for the pressure gauge so I could use the factory switch for the dash light as well. I installed the temp sender in place of the oil drain plug, which is less than ideal, but it was the easiest place to put it for now. I built the harness long enough that I have a good bit of leeway should I choose to relocate it later.

I mounted the gauge unit on top of the column. It's low profile, so it doesn't block the view of the cluster at all. Testing showed that the voltmeter and oil pressure gauge were fine. The temp function doesn't seem to be responding. Not sure why this might be, but I didn't feel like dealing with it today. Here's the view from the driver's seat:

It's hardly a precision instrument, but it was $15 and so very 1980s. Better than nothing.

The knee bolster is indeed a treat.  It has to come out to replace the brake light switch as well, which my car seems to like to eat.

You have to give yourself at least +7HP for that gauge- I love it!

I have a strange feeling that the knee bolster is going to end up coming out often enough that I get disturbingly good at doing the job, which is a mixed blessing, I suppose. But for now I have other things to attend to, most importantly getting the rear shock mount welded up.

The last week's worth of work on the Saab has been entirely devoted to repairing the right rear shock mount, which was completely blown through, as in the hole had rusted away to the point that the whole upper mount was free. I had a patch panel ready, and I figured it wasn't going to be any more fun if I waited for the weather to get hotter, so I dove in.

The first problem was getting the old shock out. The lower bolt on these runs part way through the lower control arm (that also holds the spring), meaning the nut is only accessible through the top of the arm or via a small hole from the bottom. Unfortunately, the bolt was completely and totally frozen in the sleeve in the lower shock bushing, to the point that even my beastly HF electric impact wouldn't break it loose (the rubber in the mount likely absorbed a lot of the impact action, lessening its effectiveness). This meant I had to cut the thing out, and because of the way it sits in there, it had to come out in pieces via a Sawzall jammed in the little hole in the bottom of the arm. This was unpleasant and tedious.

When I finally managed to extricate the shock (which also came out in pieces, as I had to cut the piston in order to move it around to get better access to the stupid bolt), I started in on the shock mount. First off, I'm impressed by how thick the Swedish sheet metal is. It's no wonder these cars were considered very safe in their time. Once I ground off enough undercoating to figure out where the rust ended I cut it out, with only a few unplanned intrusions into the trunk area. Looking at the patch panel I planned to overlap part of the existing metal and weld all the way around the perimeter, as well as plug welding in a few spots, to compensate for my dubious welding skills. With enough metal added I figured it would have to be solid....

Problem number one appeared quickly. The patch bore only a passing resemblance to the contours of the factory sheet metal. Remember that thick Swedish steel? Yeah, reshaping that (or the patch, which is also quite robust) was not going to be easy. I worked the factory panel and the patch as much as I could, tacked in the patch, and grabbed a hammer. Eventually it conformed to a point I considered viable for welding (whether or not this proves a correct assumption remains to be seen).

Welding was slow and ugly, which I'm quite certain is entirely my fault. But I finally managed to get it in place and a reasonably solid seam most of the way around. At that point my welder decided to run out of wire. Mildly desperate to finish the job, I grabbed the 1# starter spool of flux core that came with the welder and threw it in. I instantly realized why people don't like flux core. It's messy and it spatters. But I wanted the welding done, so I sucked it up and finished the remaining sections, as well as patching up the sloppy angle grinder mistakes where I accidentally cut into the trunk area. I hit the seams with the grinder, not to make them pretty (because there's not enough grinding wheels in the world to make my welds pretty) but to make sure they were at least reasonably solid.

Satisfied that they were (or too fed up to care), I hit it with some primer and paint and called it a night. Tomorrow I'll cover it all with some bedliner, and once that's dried I'll get the new shock in, do the brakes, and then move to the other side. While that mount is intact, I've got a feeling it may benefit from some cleaning up and reinforcement, and I'd rather do it now than after it fails.

Even though there's still plenty of work to do, I feel like I'm getting close to the point where I can put the car on the road, which I hope will motivate me to keep working at a steady pace.

It has occurred to me that I'm really quite bad at taking photos while working, which makes this thread probably a lot less interesting to everyone but me.

In any case, I had a clear day to work on the car, so I dove in, hoping to get the rear brakes done and the rear shocks in, which would sort out the rear axle. When last I left the car, the paint on the right rear shock mount was curing, and I was waiting for brakes hoses to arrive. Bolting in the new shock on that side was easy enough (it fought, but everything is relative). The brake hoses weren't awful, but I did end up having to run to the auto parts store for a short section of hard line, as I managed to rupture the one running to the right rear caliper in the process of removing it. Aside from that (and some fighting with the rusty bits surrounding the original lines) it wasn't too bad. Cutting the lines and using an impact wherever possible saved me a lot of swearing. I let the system gravity bleed along the way, since the old fluid was a mess.

Of course a day couldn't go by without something requiring me to break out the welder. In this case it was the little plug on the right rear caliper that covers the handbrake adjusting screw. The 4mm internal hex stripped, so I welded a 13mm nut onto it and got it out that way.

Once all that was dealt with, new rotors and pads were easy. More bleeding got fresh fluid through everything.

The unpleasantness - and with this car I've learned there is always going to be some sort of unpleasantness - was in part expected and in part the result of my own stupidity. The former was the discovery that the left rear upper shock mount was rusted out. Given that the right side was completely blown, this was not a surprise, but it means more welding repairs. Joy. The self-induced problem is that, while cutting the pushrod in order to extract the mess that was the left rear shock, I managed to nick the spring with the angle grinder cutting wheel. Not terrible, but I can only imagine it had created a weak point that will eventually cause problems, so I guess at some point I'll be replacing the rear springs. Good times.

Obviously, the next step is to weld in some new metal for a left rear shock mount and get that corner buttoned up. After that I can move forward, do the brake hoses up there, then move on to other stuff, probably the cooling system.

As already noted, I'm bad at taking photos while I'm working, but in an effort to make this thread a little less wall-of-text-describing-minimal-progress, I went out and took a few photos of where things stand at the moment.

This was where I spent some time yesterday. The rear soft lines and one hard line were replaced, along with the pads and rotors. The fronts were done a few years ago, including the calipers, so I'm leaving them alone for the time being. Just have to finish flushing the system with new fluid and the brakes will be ready to go.

Unfortunately, that's only one of many steps yet to be taken. While it's not as bad as the right side was, the left rear shock mount was definitely rotted - thanks to Saab's decision to reinforce the mount area with a spot-welded second piece of steel, which trapped moisture and dirt - so that's got to be welded up before I can button up the rear axle.

This is just a portion of the rapidly-building scrap metal pile. There has also been a fair bit of loose rust dislodged from the car in the process of making it roadworthy.

I bought the Saab in no small part for its ability to haul stuff, and it has already impressed me by holding all of the many boxes filled with parts destined to be bolted on it, keeping them from further cluttering my garage. With the seat flipped and the shelf removed it's staggering how much stuff fits in there, and the bumper-height trunk floor makes it so easy to load. Really, really happy with this part of the car.

Finally, because I was already working around the rear wheels, I took the opportunity to mount up the new mudflaps. I used one existing hole with a rivnut and drilled two new ones in the plastic bumper extension and mounted with speed nuts. Because the wheel well is considerably deeper than the bumper extension, I screwed a rubber isolator into the rivnut, which spaced the flap out about an inch and a half and will hopefully give enough flexibility to keep things attached to the car. I'll eventually mount the same sort of flaps up front, but the factory mudflaps are still in place up there (unlike the rear), so it's not a high priority.

Slow progress. I managed to tweak my back a couple days ago, so I put off heavy work and concentrated on some small stuff in the interim. Most of it was not really worth photographing - things like cleaning and painting the badly rusted license plate holders - but still worth doing. The only noteworthy accomplishment was fabbing up a battery hold-down to replace the ill-fitting generic bar the PO had installed.

Just some cut down angle iron and bar stock welded together, with a couple fender washers to run the J-bolts into. It's ugly by any reasonable standard of welding and fabrication, but it's solid and does the job.

That was yesterday. I woke up a bit less uncomfortable today, so I decided to put in the new rear springs. In theory this is an easy job: drop the lower control arm in which the spring sits (the same bolt also drops the sway bar), pop the old spring out and the new spring in, and reinstall the bolt. In practice this was extremely frustrating and unpleasant. The problem is getting the holes to line up to reinstall the bolts. With the spring in there you have to lift the arm with a jack, and invariably the holes end up off-center, so out come the water pump pliers and pry bars. This took far longer than it should have, but it did help me practice for the Olympic continuous swearing and tool-hurling competitions. Finally I managed to get everything bolted back together, but it was a fight.

The right rear is done. Next up is finishing the welding for the left rear shock mount, painting it, and installing the shock. That will finish up the rear axle.

Lack of posting does not imply lack of progress. Having finally gotten the rear buttoned up I've turned my attention to the engine bay. The cooling system looked old and sketchy to even a cursory glance, so - having discovered that the parts are pretty cheap - I decided to just replace the whole thing at once. While I've got things disassembled, it made sense to address the front main seal leak (which is prodigious), the belts (which are cracked), the alternator bushings (decayed), the power steering hoses (seeping), the front motor mount (cracked), and general cleaning and tidying up.

So far I've gotten things taken apart and done some cleaning. This is the parts pile from the "front" of the engine (the A/C compressor is still hooked up and resting on top of the engine):

The nose had some rust down low and a few spots higher up, so I wire brushed everything and treated with rust converter, then topped with some hammered finish paint (I love that stuff - it's damn near indestructible). The bumper comes off with two bolts, so it seemed silly not to pull it and clean the front as well. The headlights are out for replacing all the failed 30-year old plastic adjuster bits.

The motor mount was easy once the radiator was out. Speaking of the radiator, once removed I saw just how dire it was:

I'm surprised that it held water at all, let alone under pressure. But it's out now, and the fans have been cleaned and transferred to the new aluminum unit:

I've also spent some time building up the light bar. Ordinarily it would be as simple as welding a few bits together and bolting the whole thing down, but the Saab has a forward-hinged hood, which really limits where you can mount the lights and still be able to open the hood. Complicating matters is the fact that I want to be able to mount four lights, two up and two down, meaning I had to push the bar forward to the edge of the bumper. All this added up to needing to make the lights easily removable, which complicated matters. I also wanted to avoid drilling any visible holes in the bumper. Oh, and it had to be cheap.

First thing I did was find some existing bolts I could mount the bar to - I used some M8 bolts that come out the back of the bumper. Having measured and figured out what I needed, I went to the hardware store and got some 6" right-angle brackets and some corner brackets; I had a piece of 3/4 steel pipe lying around that would become the bar itself. Here you can see the bracket attached to the mounting bolts:

I welded (and I use the term loosely - blind people would be embarrassed welds that look like this) up the corner brackets to the end of the mounting brackets and drilled the appropriate holes. In order to keep the bar from spinning, I put some rivnuts in the main brackets to bolt down locating tabs on the bar.

The ends of the bar got 3/4" washers with M8 nuts welded to them, then the aforementioned locating tabs.

Here's how the whole thing looks bolted together:

And here's the test-fitting (I'll paint it black before final installation):

With the hood open and the bar removed, the brackets are about as far forward as possible:

The lights will be mounted with these Amazon aluminum clamps, and wired up with Weatherpack connectors so they can be quickly removed:

So that's where things are at the moment. I'm going to tackle the main seal, then start reassembling.

Waiting on a flywheel lock and a variety pack of metric woodruff keys (to replace the one that disappeared when I pulled the pulley off the alternator to clean everything up), so I'm tackling some other stuff in the meantime. Yesterday's job was rebuilding the headlights - the plastic adjusters are incredibly brittle after 30 years, and when they fail the lamp just flops around in the assembly. The adjusters are - of course - NLA, but fortunately a guy over at SaabCentral is experimenting with 3D printing replacements. He sent me a set for testing, and I purchased new posts and sleeves for the ball ends from eEuroparts (these are aftermarket).

Rebuilding was pretty straightforward, and with a little work the assemblies were nice and tight, and adjustable, once again. I popped them back in the car this morning.

Before I put the bumper back on I removed a whole bunch of rusty fasteners. Some were non-critical, but where I needed to be able to attach stuff I installed new rivnuts. Without those, things like the license plate holder would never hold on, since all that was left of the originals was rust and good intentions. With that done, I bolted up the mounts for the light bar, and then put the bumper back on the car.

Took care of the front motor mount, which is just a matter of jacking up the engine a bit, undoing a few bolts, swapping out the sleeve with the rubber mount, and bolting it back in. Super simple with the radiator out.

Once I get the stuff I'm waiting for, hopefully the main seal will proceed without too much difficulty, and I can start bolting parts on instead of taking them off. If nothing else, pulling all this stuff off has allowed me to clean many years of grime off the motor and at least treat some of the rust.

Waiting for my flywheel lock to arrive, I took on one of the last remaining other jobs (at least before I put it on the road - I'm sure other jobs will appear in short order): the power steering lines. These were not strictly necessary, but the parts were stupid cheap from RA, and short of pulling the motor I would never have better access, so they were on the list for a while. The fittings showed no signs of having been touched in 30 years, and put up a struggle. As a result of a thread I posted in the main forum, I was able to get them off with a combination of a crows foot wrench, an electric impact, and CRC Freeze-off. Once they broke loose they came out easily.

I wish I could say the same for the simple hose clamped feed line into the pump. I had no access to the clamp from any position, so I had to take the pump bracket off the engine so I could rotate the pump. Then the clamp screw stripped out, and even yanking it out did not release the band from the hose. I cut that with a Dremel, but the hose remained firmly petrified to the nipple. I had to cut through that too. A lot of creative swearing later it finally came out.

By then I was pretty spent, but I didn't want to leave the system open, so I cleaned things up quickly and installed the new lines - thankfully they went in without major issues. I didn't have the energy to clean up the reservoir (NLA - I would have bought a new one if I could), so I plugged the lines and dumped the reservoir in a tub of degreaser. I'll deal with it soon and bolt it in.

New lines in place:

Previously I had installed a couple bits of the cooling system that weren't going to be in the way, notably the radiator. The rest is easy, but needs to wait because I need access to complete the main seal job.

Finally, I made a little chin spoiler out of paver edging, because why not. The little inserts were installed from the factory and cleaned up well (I ran an M4 tap through them), which is what gave me the idea. One 6ft strip of HD paver edging, a drill, the aforementioned Dremel, and some M4 screws later I had a nifty little chin spoiler that I will almost certainly forget to remove before my first rallyx, and which will thus be ripped off violently. I'm calling it a win.

My flywheel lock came today, so with any luck I can get these last few things done and get some plates on this thing soon.

And the crankshaft bolt is out! Flywheel lock worked perfectly. With the bolt removed it was just a matter of pulling off the harmonic balancer and the oil pump, neither of which put up a fight.

I don't know everything in the world about engines, but I'm pretty sure the main seal isn't supposed to fall out when you pull off the balancer. No wonder it was leaking like a sieve. The oil pump seal was hard but not too bad. Both have been replaced.

Got some Vaseline to pack the pump, so now I just need the time to start reassembling. Hopefully things go easily from this point forward. I think I'll be going to the DMV this week to get it titled and registered.

That’s great news you will have it on the road soon!

Your driving lights mount solution is super clever too.  The mounting points you found would have never occurred to me.

I was pleased to have found those mounting points behind the bumper. If one weren't insistent on running a full array of lights and just wanted a pair of driving lights above the bumper, the brackets could be cut short and the hood clearance would likely not be an issue, thus eliminating the need for the whole quick-release mechanism engineering exercise. I hate hacking up otherwise decent factory parts to do things like mount auxiliary lights when cleaner solutions are possible without much more work.

Made some progress yesterday - I'll post a more extensive update soon.

We have reached a threshold moment in the Saab project. Though there remains much to do - the biggest open question is whether or not the head gasket is breached - I made enough progress on the car that I felt it was time to get it on the road. Paperwork was done, fees were paid, plates were procured. Now I have 10 days to deal with any new issues that crop up that would prevent it from passing inspection.

The inaugural road test yesterday did not provide encouragement. The brakes were pretty sketchy in spite of fresh fluid and new pads and rotors in the rear (fronts are ~3 years old). Exhaust started leaking noisily from the rear cat flange. And the Check Engine light came on. All in the course of 30 minutes. Yay.

I checked the codes (this is pre-OBD, so there are only some rudimentary blink codes) and found O2 sensor and AIC issues. Checked everything over and found that the AIC hoses were sort of loose, so I zip-tied them tight. Nothing else stood out as obviously wrong.

Today's test drive was better. The CEL stayed off, the brakes felt better (but still not great), engine seemed smoother. The exhaust is still leaking. Got it on the highway for a few minutes and it seemed stable at speed. I've got a butt joint clamp on the way for the exhaust - I'll chop the rusty flange out and clamp the pipes together. Need to bleed the brakes again; if that doesn't improve things enough for my liking I'll look into better pads.

The head gasket question is perplexing me. There's no mixing of oil and coolant. I can't say whether I'm losing coolant yet, as I replaced and flushed the entire cooling system, so I have a feeling I'm still chasing residual air out of the system. I saw no steam from the exhaust after today's drive, but I did see some when I had the car idling for a while later on. Lots of humidity in the air here too, so that could be contributing. It's confusing. I'm half-tempted to just buy the parts and do it for peace of mind.

In any case, I rewarded myself by finishing up (well, mostly - see below) and mounting my light bar. I wired a relay into an empty slot on the panel for the driving lights, while using the existing factory wiring for the fogs. I bought a factory fog light switch and wired it so that it controls both sets of lights, with the fogs coming on with the parking and low beams, and the driving lights with the high beams. The only problem remaining is that the driving lights are melting their 30A fuse. I used a fuse tap (the only hacky bit of wiring in my work, I promise) off one of the high beam fuses. What I don't get is that the fogs run fine off a single 15A fuse, while the driving lights are melting a 30A. I don't know much about electricity, so it's very possible I've overlooked something. In any case, that's non-critical for right now.

Exhaust fix is first on the list, and obviously the head gasket remains a question that needs an answer one way or the other before I start expecting reliability out of this thing. But we are making forward progress.

Congrats on finally driving it!

Did you have any warning lights on the dash under braking?  

paranoid_android said:

Congrats on finally driving it!

Did you have any warning lights on the dash under braking?  

No warning lights under braking. The only lights misbehaving right now are the seat belt light (always on, probably because the passenger side automatic belt doesn't work) and the Shift Up light (lights up at start up, but not at all when driving, which doesn't bother me in the least).

In reply to 02Pilot :

Ok, so it isn’t ABS I wouldn’t think.

As for the Hellas, are all four the same models?

No ABS - last year without it. No airbag either, hence the stupid motorized seatbelts. I really need to find some normal ones and convert it.

The Hellas are set up with two driving lights on top and two fogs down low. My recollection is that NY allows a maximum of two auxiliary lights lit at any time, and that fogs have to be low and driving lights level with the headlights, so that's how I set it up. Discovered a weird behavior of the fogs just now - once turned on with the headlights, they stay on regardless of switch position. If you switch to the parking lights, you can turn them off, then they will stay off until you turn them on again. Strange, especially since I used the factory wiring. Need to figure out this plus why the driving lights are melting fuses before they can be truly useful; for now they're mostly just for looks.

It's late so I kinda skimmed this post. Seems like a successful project thus far.

Why do you think you might have a bad head gasket? If it's just burping, you might need to let the engine run at operating temp long enough to clear out all the air pockets behind the thermostat. Also, learned this on my project, check the hoses and ensure the clamps are sufficiently clamp-y. One of the water pump hose clamps on mine wasn't clamp-y enough so it allowed air into the system and lead to constant burping issues.

Under what circumstances are your headlights eating fuses? The short, and not very helpful by itself, answer for the blown fuses is that your headlight system is trying to pull more electricity than the fuse is rated for and this blows the fuse. Three possibilities spring to mind for me right now: 1) The sum of your bulbs will require a higher rated fuse (be sure about this before trying it)  2) Something else is spliced into the headlight wiring (who knows with previous owners)  3) You have a short, somewhere in the wiring the insulation has cracked away and bare wire is making contact with a path to ground that results in a blown fuse.  Given the age of the car, I would suspect Option 3 is the most likely culprit.

The head gasket suspicion is based on a few things: steam from the exhaust at times when simple condensation seems unlikely, and possible loss of coolant (still working that out, as noted). I've double-checked the clamps, but triple checking won't hurt. Every hose in the system is new, so every clamp was tightened recently.

The fuse issue is only with the driving lights I just installed. The headlights and foglights are not burning fuses. Ironically, the latter two are using 30 year old factory wiring, while I had to make the harness for the driving lights from scratch with new wire and connectors. I will double check the bulbs in the driving lights, but I believe they are standard 55w. I will try to sketch up a quick wiring diagram of how I set up the harness, but basically I tried to mimic the logic of the factory foglight wiring, changing it as necessary to keep the driving lights on with the high beams rather than the low beams. All the connections were done with solder joints and proper connectors - no vampire taps or other butchery.

Right now I'm sort of wondering about the quality of the cheap Chinese fuse tap I used to pull primary power from one of the high beam fuses. I'm going to check it for resistance.