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.