Remember this was a costume party?
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170825_104956.jpg)
The stripe is white Plasti-Dip spray with electrical tape piping. It peeled right off when we were finished with it, but it got a lot of attention while it was on! We had the tight jeans, cardigans, cop light, and all sorts of other fun props to pull off the goofy Svensky & Hutchenssen motif. We were a little warm, but were having fun.
The GBC event was basically a photographic scavenger hunt. The route was laid out fairly simply: Starting in Lethbridge we took the Crowsnest Highway to the Forestry Trunk Road, about 400km of washboard, gravel & dust, to the Highwood Pass (a paved, scenic part of the Forestry Trunk Road closed in the winter months) up to Kananaskis, then Highway 1 to 22, up to Cochrane, to the 1A, and back West to the Northern part of the Forestry Trunk Road - up more washboard, gravel & dust to a WICKED little road of death called Harold Creek Road. From there it was all pretty simple backroads driving to our overnight stop. In the morning we set off for Drumheller to spend some time at the museum & driving around town searching for landmarks, then the 11 bridges to Wayne... a bit more gravel, and then it was more smooth sailing through Vulcan and back home to Lethbridge.
On the first day we got a little lost looking for something, and the Saab found another Starsky & Hutch fan-car:
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170826_102806.jpg)
And on the second day, a close encounter:
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170827_150359.jpg)
When I got home, the car was FIL...THY! Not that I'd done any real interior cleaning leading up to the trip, because I knew it was going to be a mess afterwards, plus I didn't want the car looking TOO nice (it is a Beater Challenge, after all). But the dust was thick and heavy, and half the interior was out already anyway, so why not?
The old seats came out:
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170902_155854.jpg)
The carpets from the parts car got taken to the car wash, and I spent a couple hours scrubbing the seats from it too. Looking pretty good!
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170902_110810.jpg)
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170902_155813.jpg)
The sagging headliner had to get dealt with, and when I took it out I found it was broken right by the sunroof so I had to get a little crafty. The roof from the parts car, complete with sunroof assembly, was used as a jig and I set to fixing it up.
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170914_193303.jpg)
To reinforce it I used fiberglass resin and some fleece. It turned out okay, but I did use the wrong fabric. It's too stiff and not stretchy enough, and is starting to pull a little in places & it looks like a sharpei in others, but on the balance of things it's a huge improvement.
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170925_131431.jpg)
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170925_131500.jpg)
Did the door cards too:
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170925_131541.jpg)
The cracked dash from the parts car got it's cracks opened up and bondoed:
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170924_143403.jpg)
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20170924_162749.jpg)
And then flocked:
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20171003_190010.jpg)
The fascia had a bunch of broken tabs but I had the tubes, so to fix them I drilled a hole in the tab and wrapped some cotton string around and around to fasten the tube to the tab, and then soaked the string in krazy glue. Super hard and is never coming apart again!
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20171012_174804.jpg)
While putting in the knee brace I was FRUSTRATED by the way it fit! I couldn't get it in place - the old one came out fine but the one from the parts car would NOT go back in! The one from the '87 never fit properly anyway, but why??? Well, there's this spacer thingie...
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20171014_095642.jpg)
That was behind the ashtray mount. I could get the new knee pad in one of the A-pillar holes and I could barely get the center screw (into this spacer) in, but there was no way I'd get the other A-pillar connected. I looked at the heater box/cross brace from the '89 and it had no spacer, so I pulled it out of the '87 and the knee pad practically fell into place.
![Image](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/saab900/20171014_095724.jpg)
A little work to the stereo, fixed up all the interior lights, and the car's a pretty nice place to be now!