Sunday, May 07, 2006

Going to pieces

Today was "demolition" day. I am very familiar with Saab plumbing so while I am still waiting on my Hayes manual from Amazon, I decided to dig right in and start taking it apart.
First came the bleeding. It is very disconcerting when you pull the oil plug and the first quart of fluid that comes out is antifreeze. I removed the radiator, oil cooler, and intercooler. The intercooler's rubber hoses, one coming off each side, both had about 4 tablespoons worth of oil sitting at the bottom.
The radiator fluid was nice and green, I guess the leaking of a head gasket is one way trip for coolant into the oil. One thing did surprised me though. I pulled off the exhaust pipe from the turbo to the cat, and when I cracked the pipe off the cat fitting, a bunch of radiator fluid came pouring out. I guess someone tried turning it over after it had blown and that just dumped fluid in the cylinder into the exhaust. This makes sense since the electrical connectors to all of the injectors were disconnected when I got the car it's likely someone did a compression check.
The battery and box is off, as well as all of the intake plumbing and exhaust plumbing. The engine is almost ready te be pulled, with just the lower mounts needing to be undone and the stuff on the backside of the iengine, like the alternator and power steering pump needing to be disconnected. I also need to remove the fuel line, the throttle cable, the clutch line, and the wires to the starter. All of the mounts are shot. The top mountwas so far gone, I pulled the inner part out with my hand. Looking at the tranny mount, it's visibly low, and I can't imagine the hydraulic mounts being any better.

2 Comments:

Blogger 9kAERO said...

Sounds like a nightmare of a headgasket failure. Enjoy tearing her apart and putting her back together, would love to be able to aquire a spare 97 2.3 motor and five speed tranny and all the tid bits for the five speed conversion and then rebuild the engine into a monster motor. Maybe one day.

3:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, yeesh...hope none of the cylinders are warped to Kingdom Come!! Dang...hate it when ya'll find a strange fluid in where it's not supposed to be in.

Why's it that your Saab looks much more better organized under the hood than my Volvo? And let's not get into some Swedish brand wars here, Buddy!! *LOL* I never realized that Saabs have transverse mounted engines...I thought that long nose covered an inline powerplant.

You have your "Gold Digger", I have my "Voluptous Swedish Girlfriend named Helga." *GRIN*

Mark

4:39 PM  

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