Engine Assembly – Part 1

First up, cleaning the block. Now, I paid a good wad of cash to have it cleaned, but the inside of the block (oil pan end) was still coated on all sides with some gnarly crap.. so had to be hand washed.

Looks a fair bit better now, so I thought it was good enough to start assembly.

Made good progress, all ready for the "easy" bits now.

• Bottom end (re) assembled
• Pistons and crank all torqued down
• Endplate cleaned up and on
• Flywheel on and torqued
• timing and balance gear + chains on
• new oil pump fitted to timing case
• timing case re-fitted

Balance shafts in and sealed up

Fresh chains, guides, balance shaft sprockets – lovely!

One little fail, when I pulled the engine out i was careless with the chains (knew i was replacing) and they got caught up against the lower chain guide steel plate, damaging it. I threw that plate out thinking it was in the timing kit. Nope!

No dealers here of course. Not the kind of part a wrecker holds on to, so at first it seemed like nobody would have one to hand. The part is less than $2 new. I think it's really just a guide to prevent chain dropping off until cams sprockets are on – ie: not a guard – so I was mighty tempted to just leave it off.. but I couldn't, and fortunately I was able to source a used one from a specialist wrecker (Terry at AllSaabParts) – and thankfully it didn't take too long to arrive.

With that done I could get the timing case on – such a great feeling!