Swedish Car Day was two sundays ago, so I spent a few hours Saturday getting the Sonett’s brakes finished. It turned out the lines West Of Sweden sent me were fine, I just had to remove some adapters the previous owner had installed. The brake system on the Sonett was certainly not designed with maintenance in mind however, and if I even have to replace those lines again, I’m going to re-engineer them.

Anyway, on the way home from the event, the car gradually started back firing pretty badly and I could hear a faint rattling in the engine bay as I pulled away from stop lights. Since I had the next day off, I went out to take a look. It turns out one of the the right side exhaust pipe nuts had fallen off and the other one was dangerously loose. I panicked that the nut was lost forever until I remembered the rattling. Sure enough, a quick survey of the engine floor with a flash light turned up the bolt, and a few minutes of cursing with a socket wrench tightened up the exhaust.

With that minor struggle out of the way I installed some new spark plugs in the car and look a test drive…

What a fantastic change, the car runs so smoothly, with no backfiring and now the car smoothly hanldes those times when you are cruising along a bit to slowly for the gear your in and want to accelerate and you think to yourself “should I down shift?”.

So if you haven’t changed your plugs in a few years, go do it. It takes 30 minutes and you’ll love the results. Make sure you have the special SAAB tool if you’ve got a Sonett though, or the #1 plug will have you cursing!