1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Hi there Bill. I'm a professional autobody guy who has done most all of my Saab ('89 Turbo convt.) mechanical work myself out of necessity. Like yourself, I feel confident around these projects and was willing to do the research to see if the clutch job was within my abilities. It was. Here's what helped me AND what I learned: If you like things just so and not rushed, plan on a few days of the car sitting if you're doing it at home. Here are the "special" tools that I needed: A 5 mm. allen head wrench ("L" shaped)to remove the slave cylinder, a 13 mm. crows foot wrench for the removal of the clutch slave cylinder line, and a (and this worked PERFECTLY) piece of old hood release cable from a junk car at least 25 inches long. This was used to keep the fingers depressed on my pressure plate for installation. Here's my suggestion on parts: I bought a "clutch kit" from Eeuroparts.com. All pieces OTHER than the clutch disc itself were of good quality. Kit cost: $179.00. The clutch disc in that kit did NOT match my original equipment disc that I had removed from my car and looked MUCH cheaper. I went to an actual Saab dealer and bought a disc from them. Cost: $118.00. I also needed to have my flywheel resurfaced. Cost: $35.00 at local NAPA dealer. One of the things that is completely up to you is this: Replacement of rear main seal. When you've finally removed your flywheel pay close attention to the pattern og grease/oil on the backside of your engine. Is it just road dirt and years of use, or is it a defective rear main seal causing you problems/leaks? I bought a new one when I did my job, but after thouroughly inspecting the area it was obvious that my original seal was fine, (205,000 miles)! After reading MANY posts right here,the info I got was, "it is a VERY difficult job without the proper tool" and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"! The tricky things in this job are:#1 Removing the plastic "bellhouse" cover.#2 Compressing the pressure plate enough to get the hood cable or special tool in place to get things out easily. (Note: At the point of my clutch job, my slave cylinder had failed), so I systematically went around the pressure plate one finger at a time pressing the retainer in with another screwdriver. Time consuming but succesful! #3 Reinstalling the setup. Good advice that I got in another post here was this: Take your new slave cylinder, throwout bearing, and pressure plate and run three nylon wire tielocs thru this "sandwich" of parts. pull the whole assembly together as tight as possible, (tust me on this). You can hold the disc together with this assembly easy enough by hand. No need to include that in the tied up bundle. When you've finally wiggled the whole assembly into place, snip and remove the wire ties. This saved possibly hours of installation time! A really GOOD trick from one of our fellow Saabo owners! Knowing these few things will help tremendously in your task. Here's the site I used to get me thru this job. It was a true blessing> http://www.twinsaabs.com/ Hope this helps you make EASY work of a somwhat difficult task. After all was said and done, I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being most difficult) this job rates as a "7". It's got it's moments when it'll test you, but for the most part it's straight forward. Just keep thinking what I was thinking," This could be a WHOLE lot more difficult if I had to remove the tranny, like every other car on earth"! Good Luck......Bob (itsaaboutime!)
posted by 205.188.209...
, Fri, 28 Feb 2003 22:55:34
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