Ding Dong! The grommet's out, the grommet's out! The wicked grommet's out.

Yesterday I've managed to get the remainder of that grommet out. I feel much better! At first I thought I would need some kind of McGuyver solution, but it turned out that all I needed was my trusty forceps. The first picture shows the grommet piece out, sitting on the top of the intake manifold enjoying the day.

Next picture shows how useful the forceps was. It could reach all the way to the bottom of the intake manifold without effort. So, all I needed was good aim; I looked through the open throttle body, just like the picture, while I moved the teeth of the forceps until grabbing the gelatinous piece. As you can see, in the picture it was still a bit to the right. Problem solved. Now I need to get a new grommet, which should not be a problem. However, I had this weird thought in my mind: one of the possible causes for this grommet to fail would be brake fluid leaking/being sucked from the master cylinder into the intake. But, the hose that provides vacuum to the brake booster is on the side of the intake manifold, not on the top. And, it looks in great shape. So, should I discard that as a possible cause?

The case of the grommet thingie

During my adventures changing the oil filter in this car, I brushed against a line. Following it, I found it led to the top of the intake manifold, where it ended in this oily connector. I guess it was supposed to be attached to the intake manifold, but attached to the intake manifold was something that was not on its agenda for the day. Since I did not have anything better to do, I decided to look what was inside that hole in the intake manifold.

As you can see, it look a bit on the wet side. Not flooded with oil, but it has enough oil there to make me wonder where it came from. Could it be coming through the throttle body? After all, there are many possible sources of oil on that side of the intake manifold:

1. The crankcase ventilation system, that feeds the (possibly oily) air right to before the turbo.
2. The turbo itself.

Or, how about this hose? If we look back at the first picture, it sure looks oily on the white/translucend plastic connection/fitting that sits on the top of the intake manifold.

While that question is important to ask, it is not that important right now. Main problem here is the fitting is not connected to the intake. If we examine it a bit closer we see the grommet that holds it in place is torn off. My spidey sense tells me something caused the grommet to change from being your usual, garden-variety soft rubber feel to having the same consistency of gelatin. And, as gelatin, it breaks easily. Add that to the list of things I need to buy.

But, where is the rest of the grommet? Did it just fall inside the intake or it made its way to the head? I was preparing myself to yank the intake manifold, but someone in Saab Central told me to calm down and instead look inside the intake manifold's plenum through the throttle body (hold it open and look through it). If the parts were still there, great. If not, they were sucked into the head. Since I was taking the hoses that go over the clutch assembly anyway, it was not much extra work to remove all the hoses in front of the throttle body.

Figure 4 shows what I saw through the throttle body, throttle plate held open. It seems I was lucky and the rest of that grommet is happily sitting inside the plenum. Next: how to take it out?

The amazing engine spinning dance

Before firing up this car I would like to spin the engine and make sure it spins nicely. One of the ways suggested at Saab Central was to turn the flywheel using a screwdriver. Why would you do that instead of just turning it at the crankcase pulley bolt, you ask. Good question. One of the reasons is the engine is backwards when compared to most longitudinal engines you will find out there. So, its business end, where you would have the clutch, is by the grill while the pulleys, alternator, ac compressor, and water pump are by the firewall. So, it is a bit of a tight fit to get to the crank pulley. How tight? We will probably find later in the show. For now, let's see what it takes to get to the flywheel. Even if we choose not to spin the engine that way we have to do all this work to get to the starter. And, I have been thinking on getting the starter checked just in case. I might even yank the one off the 92 N/A that currently sits in the yard. Also, that gives me an excuse to see and inspect the turbo.

So, let's get started. First of all, this does not look fun at the first sight. As figure 1 shows, there is a lot of hoses and pipes and wire over the clutch cover. They have to come out somehow. First one I took out was the hard pipe that goes from the intercooler to the throttle body (a.k.a the cold side pipe because it is after the intercooler, which should have dropped the air temperature some). By removing the hose clamps on the two upper hose pieces that connect the pipe to the turbo and intercooler allowed me to wiggle it out. You may have noticed that the air mass meter is out.

Once that was out, it is time to turn our attention to the pipe connecting turbo's compressor outlet to the intercooler (hot side pipe).
Once again, I chose to loosen it was to unbolt all 4 clamps. For some reason that made the pipe that much easer to remove.

Then, we reach the plastic pipe that goes from the air mass meter (AMM) to the turbo's compressor inlet. This hose has a hose that goes to the APC solenoid and another that should go to the crankcase. More of this hose later. Right now, let's focus on the plastic pipe. We begin by unbolting it from the turbo inlet. Because of how the clamp was placed, I used a 7mm deep socket to back it out. To be honest, using a socket to back out those clamps leads to less curses and broken parts than a screwdriver. Don't ask me how I know; that would be for another story...

Now the clamp is loose (remember the other side was already out because the AMM was removed way before this episode) there is the crankcase ventilation hose to deal with. I tried to be careful about taking it off. inf act I even considering leaving it in place and remove the hoses going to it, just to find out the little hose has coolant going through it (I think that differently than a Volvo, where there is an electrical heating element, the Saab uses coolant to keep the oil vapours from collecting until it reaches the plastic pipe), but decided that may be a bit more complicate than the alternative. So, I worked and worked to remove the crancase metal pipe from the grommet in the intake pipe... and I was able to pop it off.

After all this work -- which is really not that time consuming once you know what you are doing -- here is the flywheel cover finally exposed!

I have now a bit of a problem. Is this the best way to check if the engine spins? Looking through Saab Central, I saw other interesting ideas:

• Take the spark plugs out and try to spin by grabbing onto the AC belt.
• Take the spark plugs out, raise one front wheel (or both?) off the ground, put the transmission in 5th gear, and then turn the wheel. This one is kinda interesting because it lets me kinda of test the transmission... at least to see if it is not seized.

I guess even though I went this far, I now have to decide what to do next. Maybe I will take the cover out for the same of completeness. Maybe I will (also) try the other ideas. But, all this will be for another time.

Roach Motel (or changing spark plugs)

So, this afternoon I decided to take the cover that hides the spark plug wires and put new plugs. I had bought new plugs, NGK , and gapped them to 0.026". Now it was time to put them in. The plate in question is held by 4 torx screws. After I took them off, I found a 2.5"-long (no, I did not put it on a ruler to check; that would have required me to work) cockroach staring back at me.

After the proper introductions took place, I could not help but wonder how it got in there. I mean, I know roaches can squeeze through some tight places. Not willing to let me in the dark, our large antennae friend showed me the way by going through it. Underneath where the wires exit the head is a rectangular hole, possibly to let water out or just to let roaches in. For some reason I do not accept the story it is to let the water out. Look at the spark plug holes: they are recessed in the head. If this was a motorcycle, they would have a little tunnel right at the bottom so water that finds itself inside the spark plug hole would have a way to get out (remember, boys and girls, to keep that tunnel clean of dirt in your motorcycle!). But, I did not see such a tunnel in the head. I am confused.

In any case, look back at head a bit more closely. Those black round somethings are, as far as I can gather (including nose check: they did smell awful), roach poop. I did not know they poop -- that does show how much I know about them -- but that is the only explanation I can come up with. I did clean as much as I could but it is still not perfect. At least I changed the spark plugs.

Why did I want to replace the spark plugs to begin with? Well, let's just say the old ones looked rather nasty. Quite nasty in a rather oily kind of way, if you ask me. It does make me wonder if there was any leaks or head gasket issues in this engine.

Let's examine the spark plugs a bit more closely. Look at the gap of an old plug compared with the ones I bought. See the difference? I wonder what chances the spark would have to jump such a gap. BTW, the distributor cap and rotor look work but otherwise ok. However, since they are cheap, I will probably just replace them.

The shape of the beast

Today we moved the car a bit closer to me. This way, I will be able to actually play with it whenever I want. It is a good thing when your daily driver is a RWD car with a trailer hitch and you happen to have a tow dolly.