No, it's not a "new year, new me"... I only managed two evenings in the garage in a row.

I'm sure you've all heard about the legendarily easy Saab 900 clutch change? No? Well it's not that bad and here's the procedure.

Remove the safety cover and all the other crap in the way. Have a helper press the brake pedal and hold it while you insert the special tool that nobody has...

Okay.

How do you depress a clutch when there's no hydraulics? Air pressure ain't gonna do it. A grease gun would, but there's a much easier way.

Here's what it looks like:


Get your "special tools" - a loop of brake tubing, three SHCS/nut combinations, and a bolt & washer for the transfer case input shaft:


Remove the bolts holding the pressure plate to the flywheel, and pry back the pressure plate against the spring. Slip a nut between the pressure plate and thread the SHCS through the nut and into the flywheel. Do this in three evenly spaced locations:


Pry back the pressure plate some more and spin the nut with your fingers back to hold the PP away from the flywheel:


Once the PP bottoms out on the transaxle housing you won't be able to go any further. At this point, slip your brake tubing into the gap between the PP springs and cover. There's a little tab showing so you can grab onto it with pliers when removal time comes.


Thread the longer bolt and washer into the end of the input shaft, and with a pry bar against the case, pop out the shaft and the clutch disc comes loose (I'd already started this above, as you can see the input shaft splines are disengaged from the chain sprocket, but the shaft was left in place to keep the disc located). Remove the disc, PP, and slave all at once. It's tight, but possible. The Bentley manual recommends NOT removing the clutch/flywheel/slave assembly if you're removing the engine - remove it all at the same time, and reassemble in the same way. You can see another special tool - a cut down 5mm allen wrench to get the three SHCS at the slave cylinder.


When reassembling with a new clutch I found it easier to clamp a stack of washers between the PP and flywheel, where the clutch goes, and slowly bolt the PP to the flywheel. This compresses the PP more than the removal method, and makes it possible to insert the brake tubing further into the PP and this gives you more clearance to get the assembly installed.

The flywheel is held on with 7 bolts and one locating pin. Kinda strange, but consider the subject matter...


The engine is equipped with LH2.4. I assumed Bosch's fuel injection systems were pretty much fixed for features and the only thing they may have done was altered the tune to suit the manufacturer, but I guess I'm wrong. Volvo uses a 60-2 pattern on the flywheel to trigger the crank position sensor, and this is what I expected to see on the Saab's crank trigger system (which is on the front dampener pulley), but no! Saab uses pretty much a cam position sensor for the job. I'm not sure what, if any, disadvantage they suffer because of it, but there you have it.


The goal for the night was to get the block on the bench so I can figure out what to do with it from there. After unbolting the block from the transaxle and wheeling it over to the bench, I lifted the block to the table and dripped oil all down my legs... Huh? Oh. Maybe I should have tried draining the oil first.


Numpty created a bit of an environmental disaster when the trans slipped off the dolly as I was draining it. Goof.

Now that I see the engine from this angle I can also see that working like this on the bench is retarded, so I've developed a bit of a plan for mounting it on the stand. I was hoping to bolt it up like any other engine but the rear main seal housing is a massive plate that doubles as a starter motor mount & other things, and I can't hold the block up by that. I'll have to use some of the many bosses on the side of the block to hold the engine perpendicular to the way normally done. This weekend I'll get the engine mounted, disassembled, and inspected.

This is just so mind-boggling it's hitting new levels of WTF. I mean there are conventional solutions but they've engineered their own solutions seemingly to demonstrate that there are other ways of doing things. Regardless of how nuts it makes the thing.

Great stuff Matt, thanks for the update.

More from the weekend.

With the engine on the bench I proceeded to strip it down to the shortest of shortblocks. The timing chain guides are in rough shape, and from what I understand there are a couple versions of these parts to trip me up. I'll replace the chain and all three guides when the time comes:



The oil pump is driven off the crank snout. A little scratchy but it doesn't look atrocious.



The greasy rear main seal cum starter mount and cylinder head drain path. Fairly elegant, now that I think about it.



And with everything removed that I could remove, I built a mounting plate to couple it to my stand. Since then I've noticed plenty of guys use the normal mounting arms on the outermost pairs of bolt holes (I'm using two on the right hand side), but that didn't look sturdy enough for me considering the distance between the M8 bolts being used in these locations. I thought a solid plate would be better, and it probably is overkill.



The bores are interesting - as everyone who's disassembled one of these remarks, the blocks wear very well. There's still plenty of crosshatch showing, at least, and you can't feel any ridge. I haven't measured and if I were willing to put new pistons in here I would measure the bores to be sure, but I'm comfortable that there's minimal wear at the top of the cylinders, so I'm satisfied. However, you can see very interesting stains lining up with the head bolts at the top of each cylinder (except for the outer two, where the head bolts are firmly supported by the ends of the block). My gut is telling me that either the block deck is weak and flexes under normal loads (which I don't believe) or the guy who rebuilt the head used an impact wrench to bolt it back on. New head bolts will be in order regardless, as well as a deck skim to flatten the surface (pending on what I find when I measure the piston deck height).



With the engine on the stand I was able to disassemble and start inspecting the guts. The crankshaft is magnificent - large radii in the corners, heavy, forged, short stroke, and without a mark or scratch. Bearings were std/std. I'm confident that this doesn't even need a polish, though it may get one. (Sorry, no pictures). The bearings were showing some signs of wear, but more interestingly they were showing signs of debris UPON FACTORY ASSEMBLY.





The pistons are pretty well scuffed on the major thrust side, not much on the minor thrust side. These saw a lot of lugging... that's my guess.





The compression rings looked good but the one top ring I quickly measured was out of spec. The oil rings were all pretty much gummed in place. The pistons are Kolbensmidt and the oil grooves don't drain back to the inside of the piston - I may drill them but probably won't.

The rest of my time this weekend was spent cleaning the block and the end covers. The pistons are soaking in concentrated degreaser right now, and I've found this a pretty effective way of dissolving the carbon. I'll scrape them a bit tonight to see how easily the top layer comes off, and will soak them for as long as necessary. I think that I can recover the skirts with a trip through the bead blasting cabinet to bring up the surface and then some hand fitting to get some oil retention scratches in there. The scuffs will still show but if I'm putting pistons in this thing I'll go full retard and will stroke it, add H-beam rods and forged pistons, and then will instantly regret all of that while trying to make power against a 6200 RPM rev limiter.

The plan is to get it clean and to pop it back together as-is, minus things like the timing chain, piston rings, gaskets, seals, etc. It'll sit in the corner waiting for the day I decide to start working on it - for now all I was interested in was to see if it's a boat anchor or not, and what parts I need in order to make it run again. More has to happen to the car before I feel like it's a responsible idea to spend too much money adding a moderate amount of power.

Yeah, couldn't have been more wrong there if I'd tried.



Shows you how much carbon there was coating the inside & outside surfaces of these things. Interestingly these Mahles are unlike the hundred I've seen that came out of Volvos, which were all equipped with one piece oil control rings.

Just going to throw this out and then accept the BAN that I deserve for saying it...but FWD Volvo swap this thing when the time comes.

I'm a bad person.

Sorry.

Vrooooommmmm - 5 cylinders make the coolest noises.

Bittersweet news for you: there's no room to transversely mounted much of an engine in here. The upper/lower A-arm suspension and shock towers make a long & narrow engine bay. Therefore, it's impossible so there's no temptation for me to even think about it.

"When the time comes"... For a while I've had a kink for an E-drive hot rod, and in the idle moments my mind has come up with a rough plan for what I think is a pretty solid electric car. In 4 or 5 years the already attractive systems in place could get both cheaper and better, and commercial battery packs & charging systems should also come down in price. With what's currently available (pun not intended) I could have a pretty quick little runabout that gets 100 km on a charge and cost me pennies a year to run. In this car it's not like I've got a ton of power, sophistication, convenience, or economy I'd be giving up... I could easily spend the cost of the motor/controller on an engine/transaxle rebuild, but it still involves purchasing batteries, a charger, cabin heaters, a DC-DC converter, and about a million other detail$. It's an option I'd like to investigate in a couple years, provided I have a platform to do it with.

SaabEV.

Do it.

My 5 cylinder doesn't make cool noises...

Acura Vigor...5 cylinder longitudinally mounted...

How exactly did this happen? Just promise me you won't drive around with your high beams on like every other Honda in this city.

Eh? Honda? I ain't got no stinkin' Honda. I gots me a 5 cylinder Volvo... It doesn't make cool noises though...

Meesa confused. Do you have an Acura or not?

Been a while since I've visited the forums and I had to get caught up - great build thread Matt! Thoroughly enjoyed the write up and I'm also seriously considering the Beater Challenge 2018 - sounds like it was a good time.

I will admit some saddness - you did more on this car for the beater run than I've done on my cars all year! Always a pleasure to watch you go through a car.

Rabin

Thanks Rabin. It's been fun to work on something different. I should really be concentrating on the project I started in 2009, not this one or the one before this one, but c'est la vie.