The car traveled well as it was relocated from Florida to Kansas City in 1995 and then again to Seattle in 1999. It was finally in 2002 with an upcoming move to Los Angeles (to be with my girlfriend among a few other good reasons) that started the conversation of what was I ever going to do with the Saab.
A true friend of mine (Jim Doll) sparked my interest in getting the car back on the road by offering to buy it from me so he could fix it up. I had hopes of one day putting her back together so I declined the offer. We agreed that we would work on it together at his place. (Actually he would do most of the initial work while I spent most of my time locating parts)
In January of 2002 we moved the car to his place in the Seattle area. I was moving to Los Angeles at the 1st of March so we spent every weekend in February stripping the car down and preparing it for the restoration process. We prepared the list of things that we needed to get done and we were on our way. (I will remind you that I spent most of the next year traveling around the world as represented in the wanderingfootnotes and morewanderingfootnotes websites.)
The 1st 6 months Jim worked on prepping the car for the body shop as there were rust holes in the passenger side floorboard / firewall area and, of course, the infamous battery area. I believe the car went to the shop sometime in April and returned back to Jim's sometime in September. In between trips I visited Jim in Seattle where I spent a week ordering more parts and getting the details on where the project stood.
At this point Jim was also working with Paul Perry (many thanks to Paul for all of his support getting the engine put back together.) on getting a replacement crankshaft and new pistons. Jim was also working with a machine shop on cleaning up the head and block in preparation for the new parts. This effort lasted well into 2003 before the block was back together.
