Monday Snippets
It’s a public holiday today - woohoo!
I’m going to play golf, then quite possibly go and add to my tool collection with a decent socket set. I was quite embarassed on the weekend when I couldn’t get the battery out of my Viggen to recharge it. Drew B very kindly withheld comment on the state of my tools.
Also, being the mechanical gimp that I am, I’ve enrolled in a pull-apart-and-rebuild-an-engine course, just for fun. I don’t expect to be able to do anything with my Saab at the end of it, but it’ll be good to get a better understanding.
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Maybe when I’m done I could pull apart one of these:
This turned up on my Flickr feed this morning and it’s very interesting. The engine is a Saab Variable Compression prototype. I’m trying to figure out if that’s the Saab museum or not. Everything looks like it is, but I don’t recall the buildings in the window outside.
The thing that first caught my eye was the clothing. That’s what all the Saab employees wear inside the walls of the plant.
Two more photos here.
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Another one from Flickr - a chopped and as-yet unfinished Saab coupe type thing. An interesting project, to be sure.
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I haven’t mentioned the Infocog website in a little while.
This morning, they’ve managed to get hold of a Saab splash screen for the Tom Tom navigator. Looks very cool.
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So your nearest Saab dealership is miles and miles away? How far is your nearest Cadillac dealership?
This is no doubt something we’ll deal with in the General’s generals series in the coming few weeks, but at a dealer convention in San Francisco in the last week, GM have come out and stated quite plainly that they’re going to go full steam ahead with dealership consolidations and particularly on the merging of Saab-Cadillac-Hummer dealerships in the US.
Lots of questions there, like will they have dedicated staff for each brand - at least one person on the floor that can point to Sweden on a map?
GM currently have over 6,700 dealerships in the US. Toyota have less than 1,500 and sell around as many vehicles, so you can see where GM are coming from.
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Background looks like the museum, so no hopes for a production of the SVC. The SVC-machine will get a nice plasce, just as a reminder for a not-happenend milestone in SAAB-history (that sounds negative).
I think you can see the EV1 to the left - could be the museum. The 6.th of oct 2000, I read an article in the Swedish newspaper “Aftonbladet” written by the “motorjournalist” Robert Collin. He had just driven a prototype of the svc placed in a 9-5 sedan and he was excited! Saab’s previous ceo, Peter Augustsson had driven a prototype from Södertälje to Trollhättan with an average consumption of 4,9l/100km! You have to bear in mind that the engine had 205 horsepowers!
/Anders B.
Just put the Saab splashscreen on my tomtom, looks fab, thank you for the link.
If this 4,9 l/100 km is correct, why did they drop the project ?
Good job on taking the engine class Swade. I am confident you will enjoy it and will learn a lot more than you think about basic hand tool usage.
Intake, compression, power, exhaust - it is one big party.
I will send you a quiz to see how you are doing in a few weeks.
Their shirts still have Saab-Scania logos on them?
Tedjs,
I call it Suck, Squeeze, Bang ,Blow.
Sounds more fun at a party
saabologist,
My students call it the same thing – and it helps them remember the mysterious four stroke cycle.
Curious, do they have a certification organization like ASE in Australia? http://www.asecert.org/
They give automotive competency tests twice a year and challenge two famous technicians against each other (A and B) with questions such as:
Technician A says that flash code diagnosis is the only way to retrieve codes from some older vehicles. Technician B says that disconnecting the battery on OBD I type vehicles is the only way to clear engine or transmission codes. Who is correct?
a) A only
b) B only
c) Both A & B
d) Neither A nor B
That coupe thing looks like a potential Saabamino. Which would be awesome.
I’m going to load that splash as soon as I get my TomTom back.
Toyota also only has 1/3 as many brands to sell as GM, so that gap isn’t COMPLETELY insane. But it’s close.
Tedjs
Neither A nor B
And i do not know of A certification organisation as such.
I am a member,or was a member of AIAME Australian Institute of Automotive Mechanical Engineers.
Now I am just a fudge packer
I would have loved to have taught automotive engineering though,maybe if i go back to the U.K where i became qualified as an AME i would continue to pursue that field as i loved it sooo much.
I would absolutely love to get definitive word on what happened to the SVC program. Is it still going on? Were the technical hurdles deemed too difficult (or expensive) to overcome that the program was scrapped?
The more I learn about ICE the more variable compression makes sense. Just yesterday I was reading about bio-butanol and the bit I was reading said that though it can be run in an unmodified gasoline engine you’d see a theoretical 10% fuel economy penalty relative to that of gasoline. It went on that if run in an engine with a compression ratio optimized for butanol, that penalty could possibly be reduced to 0%.
How great would it be to be able to run a bio-fuel in your engine with no performance or fuel economy penalty? SVC could optimize for butanol, methanol, ethanol, gasoline, whatever.
I just can’t let SVC go, so I’d love it if one of Swade’s official contacts (or a Djup Strupe) at Saab could shed some light on this. The fact that the system existed is no secret, so it’s interesting that its demise appears to be.
I want a turbocharged ethanol variable-compression plugin hybrid electric XWD 9-3 Convertible please.
Did I forget anything?
Mag-X: sounds good, but why limit it to ethanol? It could run gasoline, ethanol (E85 or E100), butanol, or methanol. Also, the SVC prototype used a supercharger rather than a turbocharger, but I don’t know if that was a requirement of the system or not.
The only thing you forgot: Mr. Fusion.
Just FYI, the 4.9 l/100 km Anders quoted for the SVC-powered 9-5 prototype converts to 48 miles-per-U.S.-gallon. That’s better fuel economy than a Toyota Prius in a heavy 9-5 while still getting 205 horsepower! Who needs a hybrid!?!?
“You call this a radar?”
“No, sir, we call it Mr. Coffee.”
You know what kind of engines Saab needs? Blown alcohol. Let’s do some eardrum shattering, that seems jetlike.
just read up on the SVC idea. is it as complicated as I think it is and could this ever work in reality, because the tilting part sounds a bit mad but if Saab did make that engine in 2l form then they could be on to a bit of a winner methinks…..
I can confirm that this is inside the Saab museum, i live nearby so i know. There IS another building outside the museum windows.