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Cars SAAB

Oulton Park Gold Cup 2017

Every year we go to the Oulton Park Gold Cup, and this year was Helga’s turn. Had a very eventful journey, blew off a boost hose early on and that started a cycle of constant stops to refit it. I think it must have blown off a dozen times. Got so fed up that I disconnected the APC valve to drop to base boost but the pipework is a bit stretched and doesn’t have swaged ends, and disturbing it once seemed to start the cycle.

Grabbed a couple of Mikalor clamps from the track shop to try to hold the pipes together a bit better which was working great on the way home until I went for a full bore overtake of a corsa, and as I drew level, -pssst!-. This time it was at the other end of the offending pipe. Much easier to put back though because it wasn’t underneath the washer bottle. To effect a proper fix I just need to find a longer silicone jointer that is stepped because one pipe is ~56mm and the other is 51mm, plus there’s very little overlap of jointer into pipe and the pipe isn’t swaged.

As I stopped at the next junction I came to after putting the pipe back, a cloud of white smoke plumed from under the bonnet. The distributer chose that moment to blow its seal and wee oil onto the turbo heat shield. I’ve got a couple of other spare distributers but from later cars, so I’ll have to work out if they’re compatible.