Jamie

The SAAB 93 that it's based on has a 748 cc two-stroke, three cylinder engine mounted north-south and coupled to a transaxle that drives the front wheels.

Yes. The coupling of the engine to the gearbox, and the engine gearbox relationship is the really bizarre part of the setup. It is quite possible that it has a flywheel between the banks of cylinders (though I'm not sure, and it could be an unused feature of the standard SAAB engine block casting), but it's not a chain drive. However, the engine assembly is mounted ahead of the axle line and the gearbox/transaxle is behind the engine.

Another photograph of the engine installation.

Coming soon to a theater near you, The Trollhättan Chainsaw Massacre.

I'd have given credit for "an early Daihatsu".SAAB occasionally fitted their prototypes with Daihatsu badging when they needed to do public road testing in Sweden.

The later models of the replacement SAAB 96 had a lengthened hood and the radiator was relocated to the conventional position in front of the engine. Have no fear, I'll post more images once this is settled. But in the mean time, here's what a SAAB 93 looked like:

Yep, it's a 2 stroke ... but that's still not the "unusual feature" of the engine. Here's a hint. The car uses a strengthened version of the standard SAAB 93 transaxle ... and NOS2006 was very close to having the correct answer.

Correct, it's an experimental 6 cylinder SAAB from 1959. The engine is installed in the front of a lightened 1958 SAAB 93.Now for the tricky part of the question ... "What's unusual about the engine?" (and BTW, it's not a flathead) You definitely "should've given the 'born from jets' tagline more credit". On a speed test on an airport runway, this tiny 'born from jets' car did 196 km/hr before they had to back off when it's aircraft influenced aerodynamics caused it to try to leave the ground.

Believe me, it's simultaneously one of the weirdest and most clever engine installations I've seen in a long time. Even with details of the engine setup it still took me a while to figure out what they'd done to get it all to work.

Here's a photograph of the engine bay for an experimental high performance model of a production car. Who built it, and what's unusual about the engine?

If you're just doing a front drum > front disc and leaving drums on the rear, then usually you're up for a new front uprights (some models had different mount points for the disc callipers), the discs and callipers, master cylinder, and occasionally new rear buckets (different diameter) for the rear drums. The Valiants over here had front discs/rear drums without a power booster, so if you have an unboosted drum/drum system now, you may get away with an unboosted disc/drum installation.

These days, you'll really only find manual transmissions fitted to the cheapest models (auto is somewhere in the region of an AUD$2000 extra cost option) or the performance models. Most people drive automatics.

Would-be carjacker thwarted by manual gears

option 1 option 2

Although I have to sell my house in Australia first (I'm currently back here to prepare it for sale), I've been looking at houses in the St John's area, and a 4 bedroom farm house with an ocean view on a few acres with a barn and a few other out buildings is in the low CAD$200k price range.My wife and I feel that we'll need a full size pickup to cart around stuff for the renovations we assume we'll be doing on whatever house we buy, and as we plan to get a few acres, it'll need to be a 4x4 (most likely with a snow plow attachment) to deal with a long driveway on snowy days. At the moment, the place my wife is renting has a few cows grazing and in the barn, and as part of the deal with the land owner, the cow's owner keeps the driveway clear.

Newfoundland will be a lot better than Northern Manitoba (55 degrees north) where it looked like I might be living. The locals up there routinely talk about -40 degree days. My step-daughter calls it "scary cold". ALL the cars there have block heaters, and practically every parking space has a power outlet for the block and/or interior heaters. Newfoundland will have more snow, and it'll be damper, but it won't get as cold.

I've been doing it for 29 years ... and at times, it still gives me sweaty palms. It gets easier the longer you do it, but the first couple of times I was truly terrified. I've reached the point where I can get off an aircraft in LAX or SFO, and face peak hour traffic.On this trip, except for 2 weeks in the middle when I was on my honeymoon in Ireland, I spent almost 4 months in the US or Canada, and in that time, I drove over 16,000km, topped off by a near 6,000km trip from Northern Manitoba to Newfoundland driving a loaded U-Haul van pulling a Dodge Caravan on a car trailer. It appeals to my sense of the absurd.

My condolences Bob.

With my impending move to the St John's area of Newfoundland, and planned purchase of a house on a few acres, I suspect my next vehicle purchase will be a used Chevy or GMC 4x4 ... although the replacement of my wife's ancient Dodge Caravan is also very high on the list of priorities.

Do you guys know about this: BABE2007? Cars must cost or be valued at $250 or less ... and must have all relevant state safety inspection stickers, and insurance, and be able to pass police spot checks. It sounds like a real blast.

A friend of mine has a '01 Silverado that has just started to make a loud and "oh so very not happy" RPM related tapping sound when the engine is cool/cold. Noise appeared to go away when the engine heated up, and to his backyard mechanic's ear, it sounded like a sticky lifter, loose valve lash or other valve train related problem. As he had some other work to be done on his truck that required some professional expertise, he took the truck to a GM dealer workshop. He was totally not expecting the cause of the "valve train" noise to be driveline related, namely a cracked flex plate. GM used to be notorious for blowing flex plates. I'd like to think they've changed, but maybe not. Certainly the newer flex plates are stronger than the older ones ... but the dealership found the problem mighty fast, so it may be a lot more common than people are aware of. Another friend had a similar problem years ago on a '79 Monte Carlo. The car would shudder like HELL at speed, and at idle, you'd hear what sounded like valve chatter. Lo and behold, the flex plate was cracked and out of line, and that sent the torque converter wobbling like hell ... which killed the front main seal on the transmission.

I can't argue with that. In early 2001, as an experiment, I took an Amtrak train from Olympia WA to Berkeley CA instead of driving or flying. Never again. The "21 hour" trip took 24 hours ... more than twice as long as it takes me to drive between the same points, and the train ticket cost me twice as much as an airline ticket between Seattle and Oakland.

Peter Brock's death is a far bigger thing in Australia than the loss of the Crocodile Hunter.While I realise that outside Australia the Crocodile Hunter is a lot more famous, over here, he was considered to be nothing more than an embarrassment and a publicity seeking fool who's death would be caught on film while doing something dangerous (or foolhardy) with a wild animal. On the other hand, Peter Brock has been an icon and a legend for over 30 years, and has been a firm part of the motor racing landscape and a big contributor to road safety initiatives. For many years he was Holden's top racing driver, and was known as Peter Perfect for his (usually) flawless driving. He was the last person that you'd expect to be killed in a lightweight event like the Targa West rally.

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I took these back in October 2004 (Spring) while testing my new camera (Fuji FinePix S5500/S5100). All the thumbnails should link to a web page with full sized (2272x1704 pixel) images. The shots were mostly taken in the South Bank Parklands area of Brisbane. This part of the downtown area was cleared back in the early 80's to create space to set up the 1988 World Expo. After the Expo, the land was reworked into a public parkland and dining area. The free public access swimming pool/lagoon is open year round and features a sand beach and salt water chlorination. A major feature of the city is the river that winds through the city, and high speed catamaran ferries (limited to about 40 km/hr to prevent damage to the river banks) have turned the river into a very useful transport corridor. Brisbane River from South Bank Parklands The Treasury (Casino) South Bank Parklands - CityCat Terminal South Bank Parklands South Bank Parklands South Bank Parklands South Bank Parklands South Bank Parklands Queensland Maritime Museum - HMAS Diamantina Queensland Maritime Museum - SS Forceful CityCat - Goodwill Bridge The Mansions - George Street Queen Street Mall The Breakfast Creek Hotel Newstead House

I like driving. I think nothing of a 12 hour drive, and in most cases, for anything less than a trip of 700 miles or so, I'd rather drive than deal with airlines and airport security. I'm currently located in Manitoba. Last weekend I took my wife and her two kids to a Science Fiction Convention in Atlanta. We flew into Winnipeg airport from northern Manitoba (my wife works for a regional airline company so the cost of those tickets was negligible), but the best price we could find for airline tickets for four people from Winnipeg to Atlanta for the labor day weekend was a little over double the cost of renting a Buick Allure (Buick LaCrosse) from Budget for a week, plus the cost of the gas needed to drive 1600 miles each way, and paying for 4 night's parking at the Marriott in Atlanta. We could have bought tickets to Atlanta at the airline employee rates (for 4 people it's a little less than the cost of the car rental + gas), but those category of airline tickets place you at a lower seat allocation/boarding priority than normal stand-by passengers. With the chronic overbooking of flights within North America, we'd still have been waiting for seats for a flight to Atlanta by the time we had driven back to Winnipeg in the car. With 2 drivers, it was only a 25 hour on the road (plus meal/fuel breaks) straight through run, and for the just over 3200 miles (5169 km) that we covered in 3 days on the road, we achieved a fuel average of a shade under 30 mpg (around 108 gals of gas).