orangeology

truly C&V is the best place not only in the internet but also in this universe. all kind of support: technical info, insights, encouragement, offers and substances!!!
can't thank you folks enough.

orangeology

updates:

1. Loctite Retaining Compound aka Green incoming, thanks to Alan unworthy1
2. fork is having a round trip to sunny Florida to get some proper knurling treatment, thanks to Kurt cudak888
3. also waiting for a lone crown race with a straight-er inner cut, just in case, to see if engages better.

funny this' happening all after i decided not to go on with bike hobby any more... it's still part of 'just one more' bike build before the let go.

orangeology

ahhhh reminiscence of good ol' Saab 900 aka bunny-rouble. i had an '85 900S back in the day when a grad student. paid $3K at a crappy used car dealers in Milford CT off Route 1. transmission blew 1 wk after i bought it. pretty sure they pro'ly wedged in something to a dunzo tranny just to sell the car 'driveable'. what had i known? went to a double-honk-honk-mco in West Haven , said need to rebuilt the tranny. shop manager was nice to offer me 10 months finance outta like 2k total, an irresistible offer to a clueless international student who's paying 300 bucks rent monthly. still remember the day i went to drop it with my Bianchi in the trunk so i can ride back home. Saab 900's hatchback + foldable backset is no-match, so convenient even possible to carry a futon in side the tiny car. i miss that car. had to sell it later to make petite cash to fly to London for a summer job. good ol' times.

Reynolds 

Maybe this was the key to success...
Of course, no danger here.
I can relate...

scarlson 

I'm still driving one! Have been ever since I was 17 years old and I bought my first, an '86. Now I've got a five-door turbo '90, bit of a hot rod, dressed up with the old style bumpers, grill, and lights from a '79. The '85s were pieces of work. The wiring often degraded. They said the insulation was made of a soy-based product. Was your failed transmission a manual or an automatic? I have a lot of experience with both. The manual was often more reliable, but quite susceptible to abuse. Hard to make a bad manual box look good enough to sell though, the way those usually fail!

Right, they worked as a team. The Permatex (owned by Loctite and definitely the same compound as some Loctite or other) filled the gaps. The "knurling" or stippling with the punch made sure it was centered and held while the stuff cured. I did dismantle it just before I sold it, to make sure the bearing hadn't spun, and also to get some valuable, very tall-ratio Euro-market-only "Autobahn gears" out to transfer to my next SAAB. The bearing was firmly in place. I removed it with the Autobahn gears (the Permatex actually let go pretty easily with no heat necessary) and replaced it with more of the same compound and a nice set of ordinary gears. The bearing in question was spinning at engine-speed and subjected to heavy side loads but no thrust load.

orangeology

automatic, of course. would totally have bought a manual if any had been in that price range. needed a car just cheap & dirty, and it *drove fine* for like 10 miles test drive on Rt1, lol. for short 2 years—another reason i sold it with no regret when needed a couple k's—it had all kind of other headaches, too. electronics was atrocious, breaking one after another like every month. the sealing sagged down like a wet pantyhose. engine wouldn't start when still hot after more than 50miles of driving—that no garage in the area figured why. the worst part was, tho, it was an 'imported' with always higher price tag on the labor & parts...

i always wanted to re-buy same/similar model one day. that car is something, old design has some nice sentiment. the rounded amber front windshield, tan interior. absurdly long and low profile with quirky connectors and housings. truly unique from others like american or japanese... but as a young clueless idiot, naturally moved to cheap ol' Bimmers—had had two E30s from '80s and finally a Mini Cooper. now i drive a boring, care-free small Merc. no more garage hassle.

scarlson 

I had the misfortune of owning an automatic 900 for a little while. Wanted to do a sex-change operation on it, but threw a bottle of Lucas in it and cleaned the governor and sold it. The new owner ran it out of fluid going uphill in the heat, but he said he just filled it up and kept driving. I never heard from him again after that though.
'85 electronics are, like I said, incurable. The wiring harnesses just disintegrate.

Easy fix, just drop the headliner and reline it with foam-backed cloth from Joann Fabrics and 3M spray adhesive from Home Depot. Done in an afternoon for $100.

Hall effect sensor, which resides in the distributor and does spark timing. I'm like 90% sure.

Yeah there's nothing quite like a SAAB.. I can't seem to resist 'em! Best thing about a SAAB though? You can fix a SAAB, you can fix anything.

Oh god, I HATE working on Minis. I once changed an engine on one. Every step was a nightmare! Stuff shoehorned in where it ought not to be. Mercedes though, those are quite a bit easier. Once worked on one for an assistant beekeeper, who paid me in local honey. I had buckets of the stuff by the end. His girlfriend's kids kept wrecking the car. I think he might have been literally skimming off the top of the apiary's stock, but I looked the other way - it was *ahem* a sweet deal for me.

cudak888 

Before:



After:




I also shaved the crown race seat just a bit, so you've gained about 0.75mm for stack height. I didn't do any further, as that would cause the crown to interfere with a full-size brake bolt washer (note the witness mark of the washer on the chrome in the last piccture vs. where I stopped with the cutter).

You might also want to consider something other than the Tange Passage headset. I Googled it and realized that's the same crown race that's in my three Velo-Yellows. All of them had cracked from bad crown race prep - while that's more a condemnation of the prep of the fork, it doesn't speak well for the strength of a steel crown race. I believe this is the same crown race used on Wal-Mart-level Roadmasters and Huffy BSO's. Bottom of the bottom end; I don't care if it says Tange on it.

-Kurt

unworthy1

that suckah is KNURLED. and I had no trouble at all with a recent Passage I bought from a seller in Taiwan, very ordinarily crown race with no extra inner radius. Of course this is going on a flipper, so....

cudak888 

I'll try and grab a photo of one of the cracked Velo Yellow raceways over the weekend - if I can find one. Those have the same inner taper that orangeology speaks of.

-Kurt

orangeology

👍👍👍
!!!
thank you Kurt! it just looks fantastic. can't wait to 'touch' the knurled part myself.

as for the crown race: i'm planning to swap it with the one from Cane Creek (incoming). have had a successful experience of mix-match, hopefully it works. well, or not. yes, i realized that overall quality of Passage is sub-par if not medium just guessing from it's finish & materials etc. wasn't going to get surprised if there's a horror story—i know there also seem to be stories from the other end. with another .75mm allowance, will measure again and see what i can do. what i really would like to go with is DA 7600—listed as 30.3mm stack height also with a couple mm's washer—but it's literally unobtanium so is earlier version 600 Ultegra.