Travel Day 1 - Aug 10th 9:15AM - Palo Alto CA
I met up with Don and David Young at Don's house in Palo Alto. Don is the
President of the Bay Area Saab Club and would be driving Paul Perry's (of
Saab Factory fame) 1968 Sonett V4 out to Keystone. David was in his 1994 9000
Aero and I would be driving my 1990 900. Don handed out the walkie talkies
and with a couple of snapshots, we were on our way leaving just after the
Bay Area commute. We passed ten miles of backed up traffic on 680 as we
left. The drive up to Tahoe was uneventful with the Sonett leading the way
followed by me with David acting as the sweep. We stopped in Reno for an
amazing prime rib sandwich at the Silver Legacy and were quickly on our way
deep into Nevada. We hit Elko at around 7:45pm and were pretty pleased with
the time we had made.
Travel Day 2 - Aug 11th 8:30AM - Elko Nevada
My phone rings, but I was expecting a walkie talkie call and the other two
Saabs waiting outside my motel... It was Don and apparently the Sonett was
not starting. I drove over to where they were staying and the Sonett was
cranking well and catching but sputtering out clearly not running on all
four. Due to the altitude, the car was definitely running rich and before I
arrived they had decreased the spark plug gap which didn't help too much. I
suggested we check to see if we were getting spark to all the plugs (just
about my only contribution and one that would have come up shortly anyway).
We were indeed not getting spark to all the plugs. After a short call to the
Saab Factory and a check of all the plugs, we determined only number 3 was
getting any spark and it was weak at that. Well, it turns out that the only
thing that Paul had done to bring the car into the 90's was to install an
electronic ignition. Don had a mechanical distributor and we installed it
and the car started right up and sounded greata ,but would stall at idle. We
decided to embark east to see how it ran and warm it up at the same time.
About 25 miles later, we took a desolate exit and parked under an overpass
in the shade. Amazing things you find in out of the way places. The
underside of the bridge was covered with Swallows' nests and, consequently,
a hell of a lot of bird guano. We then made a number of adjustments. First,
we adjusted the dwell gap. Second, we disassembled the Webber carburetor and
removed the primary jet (.140, I think. It's possible I'm not remembering
correctly.) and replaced it with the secondary (.135) and then put a smaller
jet in the secondary (.125). After reassembly, we adjusted the timing and
the Sonett was ready to go. In fact, Don said the car ran better and with
more power the second day.
Shortly after we got back on the road, David walkie talkied (my new favorite verb) us to say Salt Lake City had been hit by a tornado. Turns out, if we hadn't had the Sonett delays, we would have been in Salt Lake City right about the time the Tornado touched down. We stopped about 30 miles outside Salt Lake City to gas up but there was no power and the pumps were not working. We continued on and hit very heavy traffic in SLC. Although we could see the heavy front to the North, we could not see any of the damage from the highway. We didn't really stop for lunch because we were so behind and pushed on down I15 to highway 6 and across to I70. We pulled into Clifton outside of Grand Junction sometime around 10PM, I believe. We grabbed a quick dinner and commented on the fact that we had seen incredibly few Saabs on the road over the last two days. However, the Sonett got stares from every car that passed or was passed.
Travel Day 3 & Arrival - Aug 12th Clifton CO - 9:15AM
We headed over to Glenwood Springs. We got a good cup of coffee and lunch and relaxed a little. We had an easy drive to Keystone from here. As we pulled out of town, we met up with a 9000CSE that was clearly headed to the convention. They stuck with us for awhile before pulling ahead. We passed them later on and didn't see them until they pulled in at the convention. Now we started passing Saab owners like crazy, all waving.
We arrived at Keystone and hit the registration, picking up our packets and
t-shirts. I finally got to meet Steve Goldberger. Actually, I met his wife
Norma first. Besides having Saabs in common, we're both African Grey Parrot
owners, so my first conversation at the convention was about Parrots instead
of Saabs. We watched the caravan that had done the Rockies tour pull in with
Erik Carlsson in the lead. He hopped out and the next car was Paul Perry and
his wife Sheila in their 93F. As each car pulled up, the driver got out for
a picture with Erik. We stood in the parking lot for awhile with the Sonett
hood open and talked with a bunch of other Saab fanatics as the temperature
nose-dived. We finally packed it in to go get checked in after which Sheila,
Paul, Don, David, and I went out for dinner.
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