And in rolls the SaaBeeru ... by Bradcr

5 minute(s) of a 145 minute read

I've been wishing since I got my 9-2x that a bit more was done with the interior than the 2-tone seats and the steering wheel. I've had plenty of folks tell me that they hate wood grain, but I pulled the trigger and I'm damn pleased with the results. I bought the black HVAC inserts, painted the dials myself, and arranged for a custom pattern with Hydro-Dip.com. This is the way it should have been from the factory, and looks so stock, you'd think it came this way:

A few weeks overdue, but I had my heads shipped back from Equilibrium Tuning in California to Woolman Performance in Spokane for final work. For those not familiar, Woolman Performance is Craig Woolman, the old engine builder for Maxwell Power. I had Craig build out the full longblock and walk me through the entire process over the course of a workday. I'm probably forgetting some items, but here is the rundown:

EJ257 Block

JE Forged Pistons

ARP 625 Head Studs

Manley I-Beams

Killer B Oil Pickup and 6qt pan

Hardened Crank

ACL Race Bearings

Plus a couple of personal touches:

Now I'm just waiting on Nameless Performance to complete their EWG UpPipe and I can move on to the Engine/Tranny install.

2-8-2016

Still waiting on the Nameless EWG solution, but I realized that shouldn't hold me back from my break in time. So, on to the big stuff- I pulled the Type-RA trains out and bolted on the Moore Performance blast plates, mismatched because they had redone one side to avoid hitting the trains tunnel on the driver's side (It hit anyway, whack that with a hammer before install if you try them, it's a PITA after the fact).

Off to the shop! I coudn't bear to tie up my garage for that long, so I had the install done by AWD Auto in Kirkland, WA.

Partway through install; here's the point where they should have noticed that stupid blast plate bolt:

And here it is, looking pretty much exactly the same, but at least I took the time to do some cleanup and work on matching the blue pieces:

Since I don't have a lot to do during break in, I'm back to work on getting the lights 100% once and for all. Redid the tails with LEDs:

Since my tails are blacked out, here is the comparison with just the new bulbs in the LH lens:

I needed to reseal my fronts anyway to stop fogging and had some dead LEDs, so I redid the halos and integrated the LED strip so they would appear as a continuous pattern. Wired this to the turn signals so I have the Amber switchback effect (Sorry about the Amber pic quality, the turn signal bulb made this the best pic my camera could do):