Competition Car Update

The rally team will get the delivery of the fender extenders this week from RP Glasfiber (learn more about them here) and this will allow us to complete the chassis/body alterations. So within a few weeks the car will be ready for the paint job at Birkas Rally Car shop and Paint. The car will be painted black with a truck paint. The truck paint is tougher and more resilient, as well as quite a bit cheaper than regular car paint. The only drawback is the lack of selection of colors, but for us it isn’t an issue since we only need two colors – black and white.

The metalwork on the car with the guys in Vadstena goes on with some interesting alterations.

We managed to get some 40 scanned slides from Swedish car magazine Teknikens Värld from a test they did of the black 99 Turbo Rally car in 1979.

Click to enlarge.

The detailed pictures have given us a better insight on what the car looked like. As a result of reviewing these shots, we are now making the following alterations:

• adding 4 horizontal tubes behind front wheel-arch and in front of the rear, this is to connect the supports when servicing the car.
• A battery shelf is created under the windscreen near the wipermotor, so a smaller size battery will fit.
• The exhaust will get sufficient space in the very rear by creating a half-tunnel in the area where the spare wheel originally sat in the car.

Our US version headlights have been found though a great SAAB collector who works with Cosworth. The rally team will trade some Saab 96 stuff to get what we need for the project. Also we have been given a light kit for the cost of transport from the US.

Great!