The Story of Kalle’s Saab 90 RWD

It all started with my childhood belief that the old Saabs where rear wheel driven. Something about their aggressive lines and look just said sportcar and sportcars where rwd, in my mind. Obviously I learned that they all where fwd pretty soon but my brain had still made up its mind about the subject.

I bought the car in 2013 and started almost instantly gutting it.

I acuired the parts I needed (modified BMW transmission to fit Saabs engine was the first big buy)
I had no idea what kind of rear end I needed to use, but I didnt want to copy what everyone else was doing. Everybody used either Opel, Volvo or some giant Ford stiff axle.

I finally went for a cheap but durable BMW E39 rear end. Fully adjustable and with some mods the differential can be swapped to almost anything.

I bought a drive shaft for BMW E39 520 and measured how long I needed it to be and shortened it to fit my needs. I built my desired engine, a B204 from Saab with B235 headgasket for better durability, and mounted it lenght wise in the car connected to my gearbox. I attached the driveshaft and the rear end. I bolted on some wheels and lined everything up with a jacklift under the differential. When everything looked good I just welded some mounts to the chassies.

After all that I proceeded and made new floor panels and stuff like that. All the boring stuff came after this. Fast forward through years of no motivation and family raising and we arrive at first start up and test drive in 2020 or 2021.

Most of the heavy work was done by me when I worked at Nordic Tuning so a big thanks goes to Nordic for supplying me with the tools, time and knowledge to do something like this.

This winter I will build a new engine. The new one is going to be a B234 (2.3 liter turbo) to gain more torque but still keep everything else as it is. I will also build a new intake manifold due to not being satisfied with how this one looks.

Heres the full specification, and If you want more or use any pictures just visit www.garaget.org/uhrjr

• B204R (2.0 liter Saab turbo)
• Trionic 5 mapped by Nordic Tuning Dalarna
• e85 Electric Davies Craig water pump
• Saab 9-3ss radiator
• do88 oil cooler
• B202 cams
• extractor manifold
• 3″ exhaust system
• 2 silencers
• Intake self-built in sheet metal (to be replaced with a smaller for better spool)
• nuke bridge injector
• nuke fuel pressure regulator
• 1000cc Lucas injectors
• 2 pcs “Bosch 040” fuel pumps (one feeding the catch tank and one feeding the engine from the catch tank)
• 35l tank that is filled from the outside through the tailgate
• 2l catch tank
• Garrett GT3076R T3
• 35mm Tial external wastegate
• open 4″ filter behind left headlight
• Saab 9-5 flywheel
• Saab 9-5 Aero pressure plate
• 4-puck sinter
• BMW zf 5vxl box with Saab sweep
• BMW e39 drive shaft shortened
• 188 plate diff from BMW e34