16 valve B motor - living the dream

[Luke]

Heres some stuff that I did a few weeks ago but haven't got around to posting yet....

I followed Geoff's helpful list of waterpump part numbers from mcmaster carr which worked out great.



I started by pressing the ball bearing onto the main shaft:

Then I pressed the seals and the shaft into the block:



Pretty easy and the parts fit perfectly.

The water pump cover is one from a very early 900 so that I can run a different coolant circulation path and reservoir which better evacuates the air in the system than the 99 routing.

[nutcase]

I winced when I saw the hammer - then I remembered you're using the coarse tooth shaft. Not Saab's best idea going to the fine tooth one!

[Geoff]

With that style of pump shaft (bolt on top with an O-ring holding the impeller in place) were you able to press the impeller down slowly and do the grease on the underside of the pump cover trick or did you just have to press it home?

[DrewP]

My early 8-tooth pump I just pressed it all the way down and it seemed to go fine.

When I did the pump on one of the guy's '78 EMS's with the 12-tooth pump I broke the (old) water seal by pressing it all the way down and had to work the impeller down slowly until it just cleared the cover.

[Luke]

Heres something cool thats been in the works for a little while. SAAB did some special lightening of the flywheels on the factory works engines. Based on some photographs of the works engines, we were able re-create the piece. Dave Kennedy at Lesco did the machine work, as he's done some similar flywheels before and was happy to get involved with the project.

You can make out the flywheel fairly well in this pic:

It turned out great and save about 6.5 lbs over stock.

[Jordan]

Heres something cool thats been in the works for a little while. SAAB did some special lightening of the flywheels on the factory works engines. Based on some photographs of the works engines, we were able re-create the piece. Dave Kennedy at Lesco did the machine work, as he's done some similar flywheels before and was happy to get involved with the project.
It turned out great and save about 6.5 lbs over stock.

That's hot.

I bet that ate up a bunch of end mills-- aren't those flywheels hardened?

[Geoff]

You're going to have this whole thing balanced.... aren't you?

[Luke]

Its been balanced, if you look at the flywheel at about 2 o'clock on the 2nd pic you can see the peck marks.

[SwedeSport]

How much to do another one?

[Geoff]

Was just the flywheel balanced or the whole rotating assembly? There's a big difference. Just because a flywheel is balanced it doesn't mean that the whole assembly is balanced. The rotating assembly could have been balanced without the flywheel and the flywheel could be balanced independently and as a unit it could be very unbalanced. I'm sure you know what you're doing, I'd just hate to see the thing shake it self to death after you've put all that work into it.

[DrewP]

Dave usually makes me send him the pressure plate I'm going to use to match it to the flywheel when he does them for me.

I'm sure it's all under control.

[sjones]

I just had my water pump rebuilt at Troll Motors here in Seattle. Nate said he had a few impellers machined, but only had 1 or two seal/bearing kits. Nice to see the mallet action!

[Luke]

I just had my water pump rebuilt at Troll Motors here in Seattle. Nate said he had a few impellers machined, but only had 1 or two seal/bearing kits. Nice to see the mallet action!

Haha just to set the record straight, in that pic I was just tapping the top seal home, not pounding the shaft in.

[Luke]

Was just the flywheel balanced or the whole rotating assembly? There's a big difference. Just because a flywheel is balanced it doesn't mean that the whole assembly is balanced. The rotating assembly could have been balanced without the flywheel and the flywheel could be balanced independently and as a unit it could be very unbalanced. I'm sure you know what you're doing, I'd just hate to see the thing shake it self to death after you've put all that work into it.

The crank was balanced independantly when it was off getting the journals polished a few months ago, and the flywheel was balanced to zero. Thats the way SAAB did them, you can swap flywheel and harmonic balancers without an effect on the balance. This is pretty much true with all 4 cylinders (except the mighty V4). All the rods/pistons were matched to within a gram as well.

[sonett]

Heres something cool thats been in the works for a little while. SAAB did some special lightening of the flywheels on the factory works engines. Based on some photographs of the works engines, we were able re-create the piece. Dave Kennedy at Lesco did the machine work, as he's done some similar flywheels before and was happy to get involved with the project.
It turned out great and save about 6.5 lbs over stock.

I'm sure its more than 6.5 lbs lighter, which is just on 3kg, when i hade mine lightened by just machining the outer part it was a saving of 2kg. Can you put the flywheel on some accurate scales so we all know for sure what it weighs?