match except for the one of the transmission bolt holes near the starter. ... 2)
Since the connectors are different, I had to transfer the knock sensors, crank
sensor ...
A Brief history: I bought the SAAB 9000, V6 with rod knock. I knew there was something seriously wrong with this engine, but hopping that it would just be a small fix. But it turned out that there is nothing I can do but tear down the bottom end of engine. I’ld be much more careful in the future. Then come to find out that SAAB 9000 V6 are so rare, and wrecking yard want an arm and a leg for a used engine. Definitely less expensive than new engine, which would set me back $3200 plus tax, but still a lot more than that I wanted to spend. These engines also have a design flaw with timing belt, and tensioner. In the U.S., the same engine is used on the Cadillac Catera and Saturn L-series. Catera had recall regarding timing belt/tensioner issue on ’97 and ’98. L-series doesn’t have V6 until 2000. Finally I was able to locate the L-series engine about 40 miles away from my home with the price that I was willing to pay for. If it weren’t for the Saturn engine, it would make no financial sense at all to have the SAAB engine replaced in this car. Thus, Lseries V6 in my SAAB 9000 story begins. 1995, SAAB 9000, V6 engine swap The following steps were done while I was swapping the V6 engine off my 1995, SAAB 9000. These steps are for reference, and use them at your own risk. Engine Removal: 1) Remove battery, and battery tray. 2) Remove the Cruise control unit attached to battery tray. Positive battery cable may be left on the engine. It’s very hard to disconnect positive battery cable at the starter and alternator. 3) Remove air intake boots. Remove everything from intake manifold to the Air flow meter. Remember to label all the vacuum hoses and wiring connectors. 4) Remove the throttle cable assembly and disconnect the auto trans kick-down cable. 5) Lift up the front of the car and support the car on a couple of good quality jack stands.
6) Remove both front wheels. 7) Remove the axel nuts on both sides. 8) Remove the strut nuts. (2 at the bottom)
9) Disconnect the tie rod ends. 10) Remove the plastic wheel-well covers on both sides. This will provide lot of room to work. 11) Remove the drive shaft. I found it easier to remove the inner boot and pull out the tripod. 12) Remove top engine mount. 13) Remove serpentine belt. 14) Remove power steering hoses from power steering pump. 15) Remove the gas lines at the fuel rail. 16) Remove top half of the intake. 17) Remove the radiator hoses. 18) Remove the radiator wiring harness. 19) Remove the transmission cooler lines. 20) Remove the radiator. 21) Remove air injection hoses. 22) Remove the coolant lines to the heater core. 23) Remove auxiliary coolant pump. 24) Remove the A/C compressor by removing 3, 13mm bolts, and leave the hoses attached to the compressor, so that you will not have to recharge the system. Swing the compressor out of the way. 25) Remove all the wiring harness connectors, “LABEL” all the connectors and vacuum hoses. Make sure the complete wiring harness out, and none of the wires are still attached to the engine. 26) Remove the front and rear exhaust down pipes form exhaust manifold. 27) Remove the engine mount nuts, and trans mount bracket. 28) That’s about what you need to remove, give or take a few small things, and the engine and trans can be pulled off with a hoist. NOTE: I left P/S pump, alternator, starter and positive battery cable on the engine. 29) Once engine and trans is off the engine bay, I removed exhaust headers, alternator, starter, A/C compressor pump bracket, engine mounts, right side half-shaft, trans and torque converter. A this point I removed everything from the engine to a point it looks like what you might get when you buy a complete long block. 30) Took some picture of bolt patterns, printed out and measured them. Brought all these measurements to wrecking yard, and compared against the Saturn L-series V6. They all match except for the one of the transmission bolt holes near the starter. That’s good enough for me, so I went with Saturn V6, which by far is the latest version of this V6 and the least expensive of all the possible engine that I might be able to use on my car.
Long block swap: Once I got the Saturn engine home, I needed to transfer all the sensors and intake parts from the dead engine to the Saturn engine. 1) Remove all the intake manifolds down to cylinder heads. You will need to do this because the part attached to the head on Saturn has different bolt hold locations than that of SAAB. They looks so close, I found out only when I was trying to attach the SAAB intake to it. 2) Since the connectors are different, I had to transfer the knock sensors, crank sensor and cam sensor from old engine to new engine. 3) Then I noticed that the idler pulleys and tensioner pulley are in different locations on the new engine. See the image below. But top engine mount bolt holes are still in the same position. New pulleys locations allowed less bends on the timing belt route. This must be the upgrade that GM did on this V6. Anyway the timing belt and idlers on the old engine were upgraded ones and only a few thousand miles old, so I decided to reuse these parts on new engine.
New idler locations New tensioner location
4) There were no leaks on the new engine. New engine also has alloy valve cover, and oil pan as oppose to plastic and steel on the old engine. I think this is better for sealing. I didn’t even bother to change out the gasket as the engine looked so clean, then decided re-torqueing all bolts around the valve cover and oil pan is good enough for me. 5) Install all of the intake parts from old engine to new engine. 6) Install alternator, flex disk to the crank (or whatever you call it, it’s fly wheel like thing where the torque convertor is attached to), torque convertor, starter, transmission and , engine mounts hardware. Note: These items are not in complete order, you may have to follow common sense as some parts may need to be installed in correct order, otherwise they will get in your way of installing other parts. 7) Install the exhaust manifolds. Then it’s ready to be put back in the car. 8) When the engine was in, we had trouble with exhaust down pipes hitting the oil pan. The easy way to deal with this was bang the exhaust pipe to an oval shape where it was touching the oil pan. When I did this, the flanges did not line up anymore. This is a good thing, then use a bottle jack to stretch the S-bend on the rear down pipe, which conveniently allowed more space where it needed and the flanges also line up.
Exhaust interfere with oil pan
New engine is completely in the car.
Then you are ready to put everything back together, and hope for the best. In my case it turned out better than I expected, and the engine caught on the 2nd crank. I had a little bit of lifter noise and it went away after cycling the engine to 3000 rpm and hold it for 3 min and idle for 3 min. Then I went on to finish up with the control arm (swing arm) bushings, and drive shaft boots. Clean up as much as I could and test drove it, and it really runs smooth. Took it
in for a CA emission test, I was really nervous, and it passed with both HC and CO at average levels. I like to thank saabcentral and saabnet board members who helped me verified the engine compatibility and encouragement on the swap. Complete swap.
Picture of the car.
