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I just got finished removing the balance shaft chain on my 2000 AERO. The whole process began back in January. I was driving home on the freeway and the oil pressure light flickered on. I knew right away what it was, even though I figured it wouldn't happen to me since I always did 5000 mile oil changes without fail and I did about 90% freeway driving. I was close to my brother's house and made it there without hearing any bad noises. My dad and I dropped the oil pan and found the screen almost completely clogged with "coffee grounds". I was able to buy Bob Bright's modified oil pan, but unfortunately I needed to get the car back up and running before it arrived, so we put everything back together with the factory pan.
I finally got around to start installing the oil pan and some other needed work this weekend. I rolled in a new timing chain - the tensioner was at 17.5 mm and the old chain was 124.2 cm long. The new chain was 123.6 cm long and the tensioner went out to 10.7 mm. It seems a bit far out already with a brand new chain. Is this common?
I had a bit of a problem reinstalling the exhaust cam though. When rolling in the chain, I choose to remove both cams/sprockets since that made rolling in the chain much easier. I screwed up though when tightening the exhaust cam down. The shaft on the auxiliary vacuum pump was not fully lined up with the notch in the exhaust cam and ended up breaking a piece of the cam off!!! Sounded like a gun shot as the chuck bounced off the hood. Major panic! I called around to find a replacement cam and a new one was $300. I then called genuinesaab.com and they were able to sell me a used cam for $50. Much thanks to them for saving the day. The replacement will be here on Monday. I put the old cam back in while working on other things.
Today was the balance shaft chain. I was somewhat nervous about doing it after reading some other posts where people had some problems. If you look at the following youtube video, there was lots of play in the chain. It really needed to come out. As Bob from Maine suggested, I removed the end bearing cap to gain some much needed working/viewing room. E16 torx for the bolts. After studying some pictures of the side view of the block with the chains fully exposed, I decided that the best way to remove the balance chain was counterclockwise of normal engine rotation - pulling down on the back side of the engine. This way there would be no possibility of the chain bunching up in the v-shaped guide.
My dad ground off the two pins with a dremel grinding wheel, then flushed the metal dust off with some carb cleaner. The link just pushed out the back and the chain was separated. I made a hook out of some thick piano wire to pull on the chain since it wasn't around the crank sprocket anymore. The chain pulled out with very minimal effort and once it got about 1/2 way out, the rest of the chain just fell out under its own weight. Took about 10 minutes from start of grinding to full removal.
Link pins ground off
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/1469/dsc09287.jpg
Pulling on the balance chain
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/7024/dsc09289.jpg
Tomorrow's project will be putting the oil pan back on and start working on brake rotors/pads. Then on to flushing the coolant - cheaper at my local dealer for the genuine Saab blue G48 coolant than at eeuroparts.com - very pleasantly surprised by that! After that will be new ball joints, sway bar links/bushings and then on to the exhaust when genuinesaab.com gets the BSR system back in stock.
Michael
posted by 24.209.14...
Balance shaft chain slop video
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