18-04-06 Re-assembling the engine......
We managed to get a day on the Saab on Saturday, PeteMate, Sonic and Winkle arrived at my house at around 10.30am, after a brew we got cracking.
Winkle drained the oil (well water and oil mix!!) from the sump, he was very proud of himself as I think its the first time he has worked on a car! We then ripped off the plastic under tray thing from under the rad, the bolts had long seized, so brut force was used (the great thing about working on a £100 car!) The rad was drained of what very little water was left in it.
Then gave the pistons and bores a quick wipe down as we had covered them in WD40 to stop any corrosion, popped the new head gasket on and dropped the newly skimmed head on. In with the head bolts and tightened with the mighty force of PeteMate's bulging right bicep to the correct torques and angles! On with the cam sprockets, chain and cam cover, it was all going very well!
Break for lunch as winkle was getting hungry, does the boy never stop eating!! We sent him off to the chippy and he came back with food for the 5000
Decided it was time to do a compression check to see if we had good cylinder compression, number 1 Cylinder 9.5 bar, not bad considering everything is cold, number 2 cylinder 3.5 bar, not very good and a lot of worried faces!, number 3 cylinder, 4ish bar, not good again, number 4 9ish bar. So not looking so great, it was all looking so promising, but then we all felt a bit let down, especially PeteMate!
But we decided to crack on with assembling the inlet and exhaust manifolds as the engine was stone cold, hoping for better results if we got it started and warmed up. Now this is where we started to hate Swedish engineers again! Assembling the exhaust manifold entailed dropping the down pipe and the turbo, bit of a pain. Assembling the inlet manifold onto the head is huge pain in the backside, inaccessible bolts, scrapped knuckles, weird bodily positions (see pics) and it was finally back together. Then it was just the odd expansion tank, belts, plugs, oil and water to fit and fill. I must add that we could not have achieved the assembly of these bits without the use of Sonics micro hands, they can get in places you just would not image a human hand could reach!!!
Put in the freshly charged battery, and time to fire the beast up! urrrrrrmmmmm maybe not then! It didn't want to start for love nor money. Decided it maybe the plugs as I had forgotten to get new ones, so dispatched Winkle and Sonic off to Halfords to get some new plugs while PeteMate and I cleaned up the pile of tools that seemed to have collected all around us. New plugs in, but still no play, took the plugs out again to discover that cylinder 2 & 3 were not getting any fuel, very strange! We decided we had had enough for the day so packed up at 5 ish. The day had started with so much promise, spent a fair bit on parts only to be let down!
I had another look on Sunday morning, tried jump starting it off the old faithful Seat Ibiza Rat, tried to fire for a split second but the old beast was not happy. Tried the compression test again, still down on 2 & 3, popped a teaspoon of oil in 2 & 3, they both then went straight up to 9.5 bar. So the conclusion is that we have excess bore wear of knackered piston rings in those two cylinders. So now on the look out for a free Saab engine......anyone got one!!????
One last item, we should thank PeteMate for entertaining us with stories of last weekend!!!!
posted by Brookesy @ 2:48 pm
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