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things break. heard a rattling in the engine this weekend. had the valve cover off 3 times in the past three days. thought it was timing chain related, inspected lifters, chain, cam gears, chain guides... nothing looked out of the ordinary. went by the shop last night, they said it sounded like lifters. took it home pulled off the cover again and put a screwdriver between all lifters and the cam lobes. all felt snug, there were two or three that had a little play. after i convinced myself that lifters it was, i replaced the cover and decided to replace all the lifter in a week or two, no worries.
this morning, started the car. sounded like a diesel engine. wow, sounds like more of the lifters are having problems. it's ok though, not going to cause damage.
proceeding to work at 5:30 am this morning, hit interchange of highway 405 and 90, pull onto 90 and start to come up to speed. hit 5th, still accelerating to make pace. rpm drops to zero... car still had power, just no engine, crap. tried to ride tranny to get engine to turn over and catch, no go, in fact, some bad noises. i pull off to the shoulder and try to start the car. it turns over but won't catch, doesn't sound right. i look at my leds on the wolf readout, no signal from trigger (hall sensor). ok, wiggle connection, no go. unplug and reconnect, no go. finally pull dist cap and look inside, everything looks normal. out of curiosity, i bump the starter, dist rotor doesn't move. bump it again, no movement. there isn't too much to look for beyond knowing that the bottom end moves without the cam moving. so, in it already, i pop off the valve cover, right there on the side of the highway.
sure enough, timing chain in two pieces, exhaust cam gear off the cam shaft and leaning against the timing chain cover. 6 or more lifters still depressed even without contact with cam lobes. i know valves are bent.
so i spent the first half of my day towing the car to the shop and getting a rental. initial assessment is that adjustable cam gear inner ring set screws had backed out and come off, and we know what happened next... so, a learning experience. don't use blue loctite on cam gears, use red. make sure it is dialed in first and then seal it with red. better yet, get it dialed in with the adjustable and then get a key made for the stock gear.
i have had the adjustable gear on for over 6 months, 20+ dyno pulls, and inspected the gear in intervals from 500, 1500, 2500, until i was comfortable with integrity. after one screw backed out before, i recleaned and loctited the screws on the inner ring. my guess is the higher rpms (6200-7000) was just enough to start working it loose.
so, engine comes out today. shop is optimistic that pistons should be ok and just a valve job will be needed. but, engine needs to come out to inspect lower crank sprocket for damage. should be done in less than a week if bottom end is fine.
send good vibes to the saab gods and keep fingers crossed. i'll take my frustration out on the damn buick centry i'm renting until then....
posted by 152.121.3...
, Thu, 30 May 2002 14:59:06
, Thu, 30 May 2002 13:18:18
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