Car Throttle

Well, if there’s one thing that’s eternally true about old Saabs, it’s that they keep you busy. True to form, my Saab has been keeping me busy (and draining my wallet at a horrific rate!) this last week.  Here’s what I’ve been up to lately.

Foglights

This was fairly easy for me.  My car came with one working foglight, and another one with a cracked housing that was dead as a doornail.  Until I can find some of the OEM Bosch foglights (long since out of production) I figured I would get some sweet 80′s looking fog lights to fill the gap.  This wasn’t too hard.

So basically for your money you get two plastic-cased fog lights with reversible lenses, wiring, switches, and some basic mounting hardware.  The bulbs are 55w with a tinted reflector to give off yellow light, which cuts through fog better than white light.  I believe I paid about $26 USD new for these, so not too shabby.

Here you can see me attaching the mounting hardware and preparing the wiring on the foglight.

You’ll notice the lens is rotating around the housing; this is because they have a top and a bottom, and you can rotate the lens depending on how you’re mounting the light.  You don’t want to mount it upside down and blind traffic, do you?

The old (huge) Bosch fog light is on the right; the new one is on the left.  The smaller size also means these are less likely to scrape on steep driveways, etc.

here you can see the fog light wiring.  The wiring that came with the fog lights was way too long, since there were already leads running to the front bumper for fog lights – so I bunched up the spare line after connecting the lights and zip tied it to a nearby battery cable.  Hey, I keep it classy.  Zip ties get it done!

Here they are, all mounted and pretty.  I will take a shot soon at  night showing the light they put out.  On an old car like this, any extra light is welcome.  At the front, I’ve also converted the headlights to Sylvania Silverstar Ultras, which burn at a much higher color temp than normal bulbs and put out brighter, whiter, cleaner light.  Although they’re pricey (almost $50 for a pair of bulbs!) and burn out quickly, on an old car with crap headlights – they’re worth it.  Nighttime visibility is greatly improved.

Tail light lenses

the tail light lenses on my car were looking a lot worse for the wear.  They’re old, and they’re just held on by tension from four screws against a small rubber gasket.  They’ve gotten cracked and broken in some places from the stress, and were looking rather rubbish.  I snagged a mint set off eBay and stuck ‘em on.

Before; looking ugly, old and busted.

New taillights in a big old box!  eBay is wonderful, to be certain.

Washing the dust off the new lenses (had been sitting around a while maybe?) to ensure proper light dispersion.  Or something like that.

New lens on left, old lens on right.  See the difference?

Fairly simple.

I’ve been up to a few other things, which I’ll share with you tomorrow, but for now I’ll leave you with these two pictures, and you get bonus points if you can explain them in the comments.

Raise your hand if you know what one of THESE are!  I’m sure one of our readers will appreciate this little trinket.  And last but not least, I must share my vanity plate.

Get it?  Ohh, haha.  I kill myself with laughter.

more DIY goodness tomorrow!

-James