1994 900S V6 Timing setup
 

So my lovely Saab died on me a bit ago, after a few months with engine squeak and a trip to the Saab dealer for maintenance. The lower main tensioner pulley...-well I don't know what it did but its pretty busted-...when I was driving it, which killed the engine. Now my dad and I are working on it, and just got a replacement kit, which includes the timing belt, two main tensioner pulleys (with the bracket they attach to) and the third tensioner pulley thats way the heck at the bottom of the engine. We took the old timing belt off and all the pulleys, but we didn't make sure that the crankshaft and camshaft notches lined up with those on the engine.
Which brings me to my question: Which camshaft notch is supposed to line up with the notch on the engine? The instructions that came with the kit only show one notch on each (not the two that are on the end of each camshaft), and we can't find a manual for the V6 engine...

Any help you can offer would be appriciated, about this or any other things we should know before continuing this endeavor^^

please post a pic of cam

Ok, here's what it looked like a few days ago, before we replaced the pulleys. You can't really see all the notches, but we've moved them since then so I didn't think that mattered too much.

Attachment 814



Here is a diagram we found online. This is how we have the camshafts set right now

Attachment 815


Hope this helped, if not I can always take more pix.

if those instructions are specific to you car that should be about right

Hmm, so we got the belt back on and put the rest of stuff back where it belongs and fired it up. It turns over, but that's it. So we checked the compression in two of the chambers and wouldn't you know it? There was none.
So now my dad thinks that the valves got messed up either when the pulley broke at the start, or he might have damaged them when he manually turned the camshafts individually.
The next step we're going to take is to take the heads off and look at the valves, and if they are messed up we'll ship it off to get repaired somewhere.
Does that sound like a good course of action?

i failed to read your pully busted so yes the valves are probably bent up the head may have suffered extensive damage

That almost always happens with the V6's. Luckily most of the times there's no damage to the head itself. New valves are cheap at www.eeuroparts.com. I would try replacing the damaged valves first, but pay attention for piston damage too.

Geoff,

Looks like you are in for a valve job and your going to have to pull the heads where the low compression is located, pull the cam covers and look for the vavle(s) that are stuck down, the cam followers will be far away from the face of the camshaft on the ones that are. Then you can tell how many of them are bent, this will give you a rough idea on parts cost.

Rotos tip about checking for other damage is a good one , and make sure to give the valve seats a good looking over, they are press fitted into the head and can be knocked loose when the bent vale makes contact. Chances are you will find corresponding "smiley faces" on the pistons where the bent valve contacted the surface, sometimes these can be severe enough to "pinch" the top ring on the piston and cause some sealing problems, as in low compression.

The trick here is to find a good auto engine machinist to go over the damage, and tell you which parts need to be replaced, or repaired.

On your timing belt installation drawing, the crank shaft timing mark is not visible , you need to make sure the crank has the #1 piston at TDC, when the rest of the marks are aligned. The V six can have the crank mark in position but the #1 cylinder may not be at TDC. But when you you remove the heads, it will be easy enough for you to bing # 1 up to TDC. The 4 cams will be a little tricky to hold into position, but don't settle for any mis-alignment , even though it may not bend the valves, it will effect performance, and cause you to do the job over.

Just a few tips , from someone that has made those mistakes:( in the past!

Geoff, put a new water pump on while you got it apart it will save you$$$$ down the road!

Thnx for all the tips and advice. Sure enough, all the valves are bent, and all the pistons have an indentation on the surface. Is there any way that I can tell if they have been damaged enough to warrant repair, besides taking them off? I'll post some pix so you can see some of what I'm talking about.

Attachment 812

Attachment 813

We're considering getting new head from a junkyard-kind'a place instead of having all the valves and lifters replaced, since the estimate was about $1200 for parts alone, and another $200-300 per head to fix any damage that may have been done... Should we have any concerns about used heads?

Thanks once again))) ^_^

mill the heads about .001 to get them straight. Now I don't know where you were getting you price estimate for parts and why you are replacing ALL the lifters. There's no way all valves and lifters were damaged. I'd say there's about $500-600 in parts there if you don't go through a dealer. The pistons though...hard to tell.

Well, all of the valves were indeed bent, and idk about the lifters. But I guess it doesn't really matter, because we have decided to buy an engine instead of fixing the one we have! :P Normally we wouldn't do this, but we found one for $600 or something like that, with a new water pump and I think anew timing belt assembly as well.
I'll keep you guys posted.

Once again, thanks for the input^^

Hello all, I have an update and a question for yous:
We have the new engine and it seems to be good, with fairly low miles, and we finally got it in the car (we took it out the top and only worked on it on the weekends) and we were all set to have it running by nightfall.
However, when attempting to line up the holes in the torque-converter with those on the flywheel (we left the torque converter in the transmission, you see) we couldn't turn the crankshaft. At all. So we took all the bolts off that hold the engine block to the transmission to have a look at what was going on and somehow the flywheel was up against the transmission housing on one side (the side closest to the back of the car) and had quite a space on the side closest to the front!
How can this be? All of the engine block-to-transmission bolt holes line up (so we can screw the bolts in with our fingers) and yet the flywheel (which should not be independent of the engine block) is not where it should be.
Does anyone know what's going on?! :eek:

picture?

Ok, so here's some pix to show you what I'm talking about. Sorry, they're kinda blurry. My camera is going whack.

This is looking from the left front wheel well towards the transmission, on the back side of the engine. Its hard to see, but the fly wheel is hitting on the transmission housing.

Attachment 810



And this picture shows how much gap there is between the fly wheel and the transmission housing, looking at the front side of the engine.

Attachment 811




Something is wrong here, because there should be an even space around the whole fly wheel. When we tried putting it together again we were able to turn the crankshaft easily until we started drawing the engine block up to the transmission by tightening the screws that hold them together.
Is something bent?
And I'm pretty sure we didn't put the fly wheel on backwards because there is a spacer that left a mark on the side that faces towards the engine.

Any thoughts?

all I can think of is the tranny sitting on crooked somehow...this is really awkward.

Success!!!! =D
It turns out we didn't have the torque converter in all the way (we couldn't see the splines it was supposed to fit onto), but once we pushed that back the engine slide right in and we could still turn the crank.
And now, two days later, we finished hooking up all the electrical and all the hoses and I actually got to DRIVE the thing for the first time in over a month! I am so freeking excited right now!!! You have no idea!! =P
However, we're back to dealing with other issues, like the 'check engine' and 'check gearbox' lights. =/ Really not sure how to start fixing those... We might have to go visit the Saab dealer to have them check the diagnostics computer thingy. -_-'

And another question for all of you: How do I turn off the alarm? lol
Every time we hooked the battery up the alarm started going off. I took out the 'burglar alarm/telephone' fuse (telephone?!) so that we could drive it a bit, but I'd kind'a like to put that back in, even if I don't have a phone in there.^^

Thanks for all the help everyone! I'm so glad my baby is running again!!!

Do you not have the keyfob that came with the car?

Yes, I have that one. Do I need to have it in the 'on' position when I hook the battery up or something?

And I forgot to ask a more important question. lol

When the car is just sitting there and running, the gas pedal kinda sticks at first. And then when I push it down the car doesn't go until I nearly floor it, and even then its really really slow. Once it gets going it accelerates like normal, but if I have to slow down or stop again, it has no go! Does this have something to do with the transmission or torque converter?

Thanks again.

get the codes pulled first...that should shed some light at what's going on. You're in limp mode, so I can't tell you what is "normal" for limp mode on that transmission...never had any personal experience with it.

Hmm, I see. My dad contacted the nearest Saab dealership and they said that all they had to do was plug it into their machine and punch in the code to get it out of the 'default' setting. Normally this would be good news, but considering that we have to drive almost 200 miles to get to that dealership its kind of annoying that that is all that needs to be done to it... =/
Ah well, so it goes.