My (New) New Car

So the Tercel Wasn't really doing it for me. It was slow, clunky, cheap feeling, and got worse gas mileage than my dad's 900 due to it's bad cylinder head. So when I saw this car on craigslist, I told my dad about it, and on Saturday night, we went and took a look at it, and (obviously), ended up buying it.
It's a Platinum Grey 1991 Saab 900 3-Door 2.0 Liter 16-Valve, with 129,000 miles, for $1450. But there's something different about it. Why does it have Bosch Fog Lamps, a sunroof and a chin spoiler. And why is there an extra badge in the grill?

Ohhh...that explains it.
A standard 16-Valve 2.0 liter pumps out 138 horsepower, unless you have one of these...
...that little Mitsubishi TE-05 turbo is good for an additional 22 horses.
When that little needle above the fuel gauge swings right, I can't help but smile.
Comes with the original Clarion anti-theft tape deck (which won't accept the anti-theft code, so it won't work), and a separate equalizer...
...and one of the most important features of all, a 5-Speed.

I'm absolutely smitten with this car. If you floor it, it takes off like a rocket ship, especially in second gear. An added plus is that it gets the best gas mileage out of all the 900 models for 1991, due to the stick-shift and the turbo. There are a few things wrong with it (no stereo, handbrake doesn't work, needs exhaust hangers, the latch for the rear hatch needs to be cleaned up before it completely fails and then I'm screwed, no a/c belt, and I need a new fog lamp). The other thing that doesn't work properly, although I don't care because I never use it, is the tach. When you wind the tach up to 4500, it hangs up, snaps to 7000, snaps to 0, then back to 4500, and then to whatever the correct rpm is.

Overall, the car just feels right. It handles fantastically, goes like stink, doesn't pull and stops straight.

I love it.

Oh and the Tercel? Once we finish with replacing the cylinder head, it's going to be my sisters first car.

The Zenith Of Geekdom

Apu and the store owner... Apu
Behold Frostillicus!

Wings Of Freedom Tour 2007

More pictures to come when my cousin sends them to me.

Mystery Solved

When we last left the mystery of the Geschwender V4 for aerial applications, I stated that either the world may never know what happened, or that I just needed to start emailing people.

Well, about two weeks ago I emailed the best lead I had, Mr. John Worden of Alternate AirPower. I told him of the article that I had found, and that I was curious if he head any idea of what ever happened to the V4 conversion. Honestly, I didn't expect much when I emailed the guy since I wasn't interested in buying a reduction unit, nor was interested in purchasing the business.

To my surprise, about three days later, he emailed me back. He said that he had a few photos of Geschwender belt drive reduction units mounted on V6's, and that he may have photos or drawings of V4 conversions. He also said that he suspected that Mr. Geschwender made a few V4 conversion units, but stopped the project when the V8 conversions became popular. Finally, he asked me to send him a scan of the article from the magazine, and he said that if I was interested, he would look through all his documents for anything on the V4 conversion. He also emailed me this picture:

It appears that the V6 this belt drive reduction unit is mounted on is of the Ford "Cologne" family. The first Cologne V6's were essentially just Ford V4's with two extra cylinders tacked on the end.

So I scanned and emailed him the article, and today he emailed me back:

"Conrad,

Thanks for the article - I have searched through my Geschwender documents and was only able to find the attached brochure on the V-4 conversion. Judging from the pictures I would guess that he used a 1 inch or 1.5 inch 3/8 pitch Morse Hy Vo chain. The reason I say this is I have an old blueprint (not very legible) for a very similar looking 2.44 ratio unit for a Kawasaki 1000 engine. This unit used a 1 inch wide chain and roller bearings on the propeller shaft. I might be able to shed some light on why the V4 unit did not become more common:

At the time that these units (both the V4 and Kawasaki) were being developed, Geschwender Aeromotive was primarily working on FAA certification of a V8 conversion for crop dusters. There were financial difficulties and Fred Geschwender did not see eye to eye with the
directors of the company. It appears that Fred was the technical part of the business but surrounded by a greater number of managers (I have several years of meeting minutes of the board from this period). There was also an attempt to get Cessna involved with an alternate engine - this may have been the motivation for the V4 conversion. In 1980 the company declared bankruptcy and Fred parted ways. Fred also developed a belt drive unit for the smaller engines - this would have been much more affordable for customers. Soon after Fred began to concentrate on the larger engines for the 3/4 scale warplane builders.

John"

This is the aforementioned brochure:

My favorite part? "Maximum output of the automotive racing version of the Ford V-4 engine as used by SAAB in their Sonett sports car is a remarkable 164 horsepower at 7500 rpm."

So unless I can find another source of information, it seems that a combination of management difficulties, financial difficulties, and success of other products all contributed to the demise of the Ford V4 for aerial applications.

Too bad. I would love to build a Dornier Do 335 replica powered by a pair of these.

Why?

I thought all my car problems were solved. Until today.

After fixing a piece for the brake assembly on my car after trying to replace a wheel stud, i told my dad that the car still seemed to run rough. His hunch was that the timing and mixture was way off, so he called Pep Boys to find out if they could tune up the car. They could, and my dad decided to drop it off at around six and leave it overnight. This was at around two o'clock. So I decided to drive over to Circuit City (DVD sale!!!), and Valu Thrift (found a front-loader NES for 1.99). When I got back, my dad decided to do a compression check for shits and giggles, even though he didn;t think it would reveal any problems.

So he pulls spark plug number one. It's clean. Pull plug number two. Fouled, dark black, smells like gas (when we changed the plugs when we first got the car, plugs two and three were fouled, we assumed since the wires were resting on the manifold and had melted partway through). Pull plug three. Somewhat fouled, but not as bad as number three. Pull plug four. Clean as a whistle.

So lets start the compression test.

Cylinder one: 180. Good.
Cylinder two: 70. Damn. (at this point I guessed three would be at 120)
Cylinder three: 110. Shit.
Cylinder four: 180.

So basically, my car is running on three cylinders. My dad thinks one of three things is wrong: bad head gasket, bad rings, or bad valves, and he's leaning towards the latter.

"All it needs is a set of plugs and wires" they told us at the dealership.