I’d love to tell you about Mahdee, sailing, or even working on Mahdee.  Alas that’s not to be.  We have been very busy preparing for the Schooner Chandlery booth at upcoming Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival (Sept 8-10). A big box of indoor/outdoor rugs and storage baskets arrived to be part of the show.  Other fun stuff is trickling in including a display of bronze fasteners from our seller, Ron, Adventure Mats, Freebags, some soap, nautical rolling pins, Q Squared NYC nautically themed melamine, brochures, paint samples, as well as other nautical bits and pieces.  Nothing resembling a sail on the water is coming our way until after the festival.  We’ve promised ourselves a month of wandering with Mahdee –with high hopes for October–and I’m beginning to look forward to it.  Along with the Schooner Chandlery bits coming in, we also have a few parts for Mahdee to prepare for our little fall excursion.

Mahdee reference:  Here’s Buttercup carrying Mahdee’s new bronze rudderstock on the roofracks in 2008 while we were rebuilding the boat.

So what about those cars? What’s the Saab Story?

Buttercup, the 1976 Saab 99 GL (above)

Well, it was bound to happen. Owners of these Swedish cars already know that the cars are fiercely jealous of each other and every other car you might happen to own–or drive–for that matter. Wesley (the 1987 900 Turbo that I’d love to throw off a cliff) is out of commission and neither David nor I have the goodwill towards that car to fix it so it’s just sitting for now whilst we contemplate its future. Buttercup, the 76 99GL, is so happy and runs like a champ (usually) during those times when we’ve given up on Wesley for some reason or other. We’ve owned both cars for almost 20  years now and we’ve gone more than a year at a time just letting Wesley sit (and hoping someone steals him) while Buttercup proves over and over again why she’s our primary car. Buttercup just loves being the only child — or only CAR in the household. Happy and reliable.

Last week we stumbled upon and then (Thursday) purchased a 1977 5 door (CombiCoup/Wagonback) 99GL with a good body from a salvage yard.  Like me, Buttercup’s body isn’t what it used to be — she’s got structural rust and rather than do a big cut and weld job on her we’ve been in search of a donor body.  Last year I had a donor ligament put into my ankle to tighten up things whilst the joint was also repaired — I tell Buttercup that she and I are just going through the same things as we get older.  In her case, her engine and systems will just be plopped into a largely rust-free body.   She seemed OK with the plan.  Buttercup and I have taken several trips here and there to look over potential cars or parts of cars for the operation.

She’s never faltered.  Always up for the trip.

I suppose it’s all good in theory but then when we got on with it and actually purchased the donor car, both Buttercup and the humans involved begin to rethink things.  There’s always history involved.

The 1977 “Donor Body” car.

Buttercup came to us in the late 1990’s as a donor car: she was $200 and she was intended to provide a spare 4 speed tranny for our hero of a car, Pepe, the 1974 Saab 99LE that David’s family bought new and we purchased from Dad in 1982 when David, the family SAAB mechanic, was leaving home for his first post-college job.  Dad wouldn’t be able to find a local mechanic to keep Pepe going without significant cost so he bought a new car and we bought Pepe.  For us, Pepe ran long and strong.  We treated him well but used him in tough backroad conditions for many many miles.  We had over 450,000 miles on him when we ran across the Craigslist ad for Buttercup as she was on her way to the crusher.  We got her home and realized that she was low miles, at 67,000, and could have a long life ahead of her.  So, we cleaner her up, had rust patched, painted her a PPG Saab Monte Carlo Yellow, installed new rubber all around — seals, tires, windshield replaced, did new brakes and shocks and spring inserts–and she did live on and on and on.  Happy days, months, years, and decades. We all recall that in 2006, Pepe quietly slipped away to the crusher himself after 500,000 good miles and a deeply fatigued but non-rusty body.  He literally flexed over almost every little bump.  He was ready to go.

Buttercup knows all about it.

Pepe, David’s 1974 Saab 99LE at the 2000 Saabtoberfest in Central Pennsylvania.

Now comes the 1977 Saab 99GL Combi Coupe.  Good body, unknown engine/tranny — we haven’t even started the diagnosis other than to check the pistons aren’t seized up and that with a good battery the start motor has the engine trying to turn over. Funny noises from the fuel pump and we’re now in the mode of clean the lubes and fluids, change the gas, and get it ready to start.

Wait! why are we trying to START the engine of a car that we picked up for the body?  Almost certainly THAT thought was going through Buttercup’s Swedish CPU.

The bottom line is we’re now down to NO cars until the harmonic balancer (ordered but won’t show up until Tuesday afternoon) shows up AND we manage to pull together the resources to get the job done.  Since when did David and Brenda have to worry about all that? Things we once took for granted, now that we’re living aboard a boat are rather scarce: Space, time, parts, tools… in my mind, Buttercup is joining Wesley in my search for a good cliff.   A friend tells me the levy roads work well.  Buttercup’s in more danger: I can actually DRIVE her to her demise and enjoy a good swim afterwards whereas Wesley wouldn’t make it out of town to the cliff or the levy.

Back to resources.  Time: David’s birthday is on Tuesday.  I know he was probably looking forward to a nice relaxing evening but there’s nothing like a good car-fixing party right?  Relaxing is over-rated.  Besides, he’s always grinning when he’s up to his elbows in grease.

Let’s see…space…Ah, that would be the workshop we rented a few months ago.  It is presently chock full of the new but not working Combi Coupe. Yep, the car without registration and license plates to park on the street, that would be it.  We’ll just play a little roulette with that on I suppose.

Space? Filled.

Parts? On order and showing up 3pm on David’s birthday.  Tuesday. Yep.  Perfect.  I think we even have a spare oil seal for the engine if we want to put it on at the same time.