Under the Hood

Well now that one end of the fuel system is done it makes sense to talk about the other end and the engine work I've done up to this point on the car.

First think I did was pop the valve covers off and examine them and the valves for rust. There was a little surface rust on both, you don't want to mess with the valves while they're still in the block. Certainly not when there's a chance of putting chunks of rust into the block, so I liberally applied some engine block cleaner being careful to wipe it off anything else it splashed onto.

PB'laster, a wire brush, and steel wool took care of the rust on the valve cover. After getting all the rust off I sprayed the surface with WD-40 rubbed it off then rubbed on a light coating of motor oil.

After 3-4 sprays of the engine block cleaner the valve covers went back on. I also cleaned (with a wire brush on the Dremel) and added the little chrome decorations to the stem bolts over the covers.

Picture of valve covers back on.

All the hoses in the engine compartment had steel mesh shielding on them with fancy water clamps from the previous restoration. While they were very pretty the hoses underneath the shielding had dry rotted and filled with crud and rust.

Once all the water lines were off we decided to flush the inside of the block, a good decision. The first blast of water cleared out enough dirt and rust to change the water to entirely brown bringing tons of crap with it. This is when we discovered one of the engine freeze tabs has rusted entirely through and was leaking.

So we removed the old tabs with a screwdriver and a hammer, replaced them adding some spray gasket to their seal and tapping them in tight with the hammer.

Picture of new tabs.

While the rubber hoses were off I had the rigid steel ones off as well. The ends of them were rusted through in places and sharp enough to cut the new rubber (and my fingers, tetanus shot FTW) so I cut off the rusted ends with the Dremel (just cut the new hoses a little longer), cleaned what I could of the rust from inside the pipes, flushed them, sanded off the old paint and then repainted them.

Picture of rigid pipes

I took out the old rusted water-pump, which was my first experience with SAAB's fascination with IMPOSSIBLE to reach bolts. The pump is threaded through the timing cover and bolted from the back plate through the timing cover holes into the water pump in a 5 bolt star. 4 of those bolts are pretty easy, but that 5th bolt took every bit of creative ratchet building.

The new pump, which is truly newly manufactured, was seated too long to fit in the slot. So we had to make a press with a socket and clamp but we compressed the impeller down to where it needed to be. Then with the same difficulty as taking it off, added gasket (both a cutout and from a tube) and bolted on the new water pump.

Picture of new pump on

While I was doing hoses I replaced all the flexible fuel line, added a new inline fuel filter and fuel pressure gauge.

Picture of fuel line

Next came an oil change, less to put oil in the system more to flush out the old crappy oil. The first half-second of oil drain was a pleasant surprise of golden clean oil immediately followed by brown to black sludge mixed with what can only be described as huge wads of snot/cum. I have no idea what the hell that substance was but I did my best to use the 10 quarts of oil I had, pipe cleaners, and a coat hanger to get as much of it out as possible, replaced the old oil filter and bolted back on the plug.