1964-1974 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
I bought my '69 Sonett for $2500. The history/story goes something like this:
Around 1991 the previous (and original) owner (an older fellow, who's health was failing) wanted to drive the car 'one last time' while he was ill, and smashed the left rear into a tree while trying to get it out of the driveway. After he died (RIP), it sat for several years at a friends shop in Youngsville NC...........then, one day, while at his shop working on my '83 900, I noticed the difference between this *one* Sonett and his 15 or so Sonett III's, and I asked him what it was?, and would he sell it?, and does it run?, etc....The paint was yellow and cracking. The left rear corner had some serious fiberglass damage, and little to my knowledge, the entire car had fiberglass stress cracks (some visible, some not). Tim (my friend) said, "it ran when it was parked there". Hmmmphh...I figured a 27 year old car that had been parked for 5 years would have some really *bad* problems....We threw a used battery in it (from a nearby junked FIAT), and after swapping in a fuel pump from a 96 she started right up!! I took her on a brief test drive to make sure everything was relatively in order. Mechanically everything worked, though it was obvious the car needed some "tuning". So I bought it, then SOLD my '83 900S, and made the '69 Sonett my daily driver! Man, I had blind faith in that car! I was 22 and had a car older several years older than I was for my only car! Though, the car NEVER left me stranded, which is more than I can say for my 900!! (To this day, I place more faith in my Sonett starting up than any other car I've ever owned!) I always kept a small toolset in the trunk, *just in case*... The original Solex carb was flakey, so I tweaked it and rebuilt it, but it never really really worked right... Over the course of a couple years as my feelings of invincibility decreased, and the percentage of idiot SUVs drivers on the road increased, I bought another 900S to used as my 'daily driver', and the Sonett was neglected....Over the following years I went through several 900s an a 9-3 all of which were great cars...Then last year I decided the Sonett was way too cool a car to just sit in my driveway rotting...So I figured several things had to happen before it would be a respectable Sonett II/V4 again:
The rocker panels were rusted, and the floorpan was rusted bad enough to see the ground below. The paint was REALLY shot now. The brakes were really bad.... The carb didn't hold idle right. The interior was trashed (it was when I got it), all the weather-stripping was shot.
So, I bought a replacement sheet metal floor pan from Ashcraft $$$ ($600),
rocker panels from Tim Nine (cheap), a MIG welder from Lowes($400), an air compressor and air tools from Lowes($400), an engine hoist from Autozone($200), and began tearing my poor Sonett down to the frame in my back yard. After several months, I had new metal welded in, and the body back on, and the car was running again! btw, I'm a software engineer, *not* a mechanic, so I chalked this project up as one of my life achievements....
Then it was time for paint...After shopping around, I found that there were three types of paint shops: 1) Super Cheap Crappy shops, 2) Insurance type shops that only do collision repair work 3) Expensive 'whole car' paint shops that mainly paint classic cars.....So, I opted for (3). It cost me over $3000, but it is a really nice paint job. I also bought all new weather-stripping from Jack Ashcraft which cost me ~$500.
So too make a long story short, I'd say I now have around $8000-$9000 in the car. Obviously any Sonett owner could spend much more, or much less, depending on how original you want to keep the car, how much you want to restore, and if you want to make it a higher performance car....
Hope this info helps....Now that you are an owner, if you haven't already, I'd subscribe to the VSAAB mailing list, and to the Yahoo Group: vSAAB.
Have fun!
-Chris Floyd in Raleigh, NC.
posted by 63.39...
, Mon, 3 Dec 2001 05:48:32
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