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My engine. Pardon the dirt:




The 900 grille:

watkins wrote:My engine. Pardon the dirt:

I :lol:d at the battery cozy.

Wat? I doan see no dirtz!

You'll crap your pants when I show you the Buick's engine bay in person. Then you'll want to use hand sanitizer...on your eyes. (If I find that the car is viable, then I'll go to the herculean effort of cleaning it up.)

theholycow wrote:Wat? I doan see no dirtz!

You'll crap your pants when I show you the Buick's engine bay in person. Then you'll want to use hand sanitizer...on your eyes. (If I find that the car is viable, then I'll go to the herculean effort of cleaning it up.)

Can't be any worsen your stall in the barn, right?

Rope-Pusher wrote:Can't be any worsen your stall in the barn, right?

On a truck forum I frequent, it became common for a while to call an upgraded torque converter a "stall" (because they are identified by their stall speed). Whenever someone calls it a stall I think of a barn stall, bathroom stall, parking stall, etc. Then I think of how they should just put in a manual transmission instead.

I know. The engine bay is sooo dirty . Car's lookin' good though.

theholycow wrote:Wat? I doan see no dirtz!

FDSpirit wrote:I know. The engine bay is sooo dirty . Car's lookin' good though.

Its there. Theres much too much of it.

This update is a long time coming! Its not really anything other than a few winter shots. The new Thule rack is visible though if that counts for anything. You can also see my white 900 grille I painted to match my white winter wheels. Thats three grilles and two sets of wheels with tires if anyone is keeping track.

The first two are from the storm that gave the area a white Christmas. Theyve been on Facetube for a while.




These three are from the blizzard that just hit us Tuesday (very late) night into Wednesday.

I dug out my door and plowed through a snow pile so I could clear the car off without being in snow up to my knees.


These are both the same picture with two obviously different treatments/

How's le toorbo liking le weather le cold?

They are fangs.

Mine cries in the cold.

Emo Rodeo?

That is funked up! Anyway, awesome car, Watkins!

One of the flaws of the 900/9-3 is the engine mounting configuration. All three of the mounts are well below the center of gravity. This allows for a significant amount of movement under load and eventually destroys the rear (most expensive) mount. Over the years a few people have come up with solutions. A poly mount is pretty common and can be bought for roughly the same absurd price as the factory mount. Some clever people have come up with alternative methods to limit movement by adding an upper engine mount. I went this route.

The 9000 and 900/9-3 share the same block in a handful of configurations. The 9000 had an upper engine mount. Go figure. In a nutshell what I did was modify a 9000 mount to fit in the Viggen.


This is what I had to work with. Its a mess of wires, PCV lines, EGR lines, and more shit than you can shake a stick at. I needed to get under all of it to get to the mounting holes to the left of SAAB on the valve cover.


everything taken apart. The main wiring harness that runs across the back of the engine is attached to a channel which originally bolted to the holes where the 9000 mount needed to be. I snaked it out the driver side and trimmed it down. This also meant I could shift the main harness out of the way of the new mount.


Seen from the top, the holes I needed to get to are just right of center.


This is the modified mount from the block on a 9000 four cylinder. Due to a different accessory layout in the 9-3, two mounting points had to be trimmed from the mount making it roughly half the size. The original engine mount doubled as an alternator bracket as well. It can be seen here http://www.eeuroparts.com/Main/PartDeta ... id=4358818


Here is the mount installed. You can see the wire harness channel. The way I trimmed it creates a tight fit between the mount and block but does not actually come between the mount and block.


I forgot to take a picture of the bracket I made for the firewall mount. However, this is some of the reinforcing I did behind the firewall. The thick aluminum angle has been both JB Welded and bolted to the firewall. The two bolts shown are where the bracket for the engine mount attaches. The bandaid box was just a way to wedge the lower piece of aluminum in place while the JB Weld set a bit.


This shows the relative location of the mount as well as how I accessed the back side of the firewall through the trim beneath the windshield.


The arm of the 9000 four cylinder mounted to the strut tower. It was the wrong size to be of any use. This is the arm from a V6 9000, which obviously has a slightly different configuration.


The bracket mounted to the firewall with the insulation trimmed to fit. The aluminum used is roughly the same gauge as on the factory bits.


The 9000 V6 arm attached to the firewall. I probably should have angled the mount a bit better, but the tension on the bushing doesnt concern me because it takes up much of the slack of the blown bushing.


The arm mounted to the block.


Everything put back in place. The EGR valve has been attached to the intake manifold to get it out of the way and some wires have been neatened up.


For reference to the rest of the engine bay.

Impressions:
There doesnt seem to be any additional cabin vibration at idle or while driving. However, under load there is a moderately annoying thrum sound caused by the semi-solid connection between the block and cabin. The sound comes through the glove box and might be remedied by some insulation if I ever get around to it. Shifting is much tighter and the stability of the engine can be clearly noticed while driving spiritedly.

If that doesn't help the noise enough, I'd try angling that firewall mount so the bushing isn't twisted.