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The 4-speed had no need of centering springs, either on the shifter or in the gearbox. You were prevented from going into the non-existent 5th gear by the plastic cover on the bottom of the shifter. Hold the knob to the left, you get 1 & 2. Hold it to the right, you get 3 & 4. Lift the collar (which lifts a pin over a rib in the plastic), and move the shifter to the right, and you can get to reverse.
That plastic cover must be changed, or you'll only be able to get 4 of the 5 speeds in the box. Of course, swapping in the whole 5-speed shifter is also a solution.
As for the front covers, there are a couple variations for the 5-speed covers, in addition to the hydraulic vs rubber variation. Some combinations of case and cover will leave you with either a hole where stuff can get in or out of the box, or (best case) a place where the only thing keeping stuff in and out is the gasket material. AFAIK, you can NOT use the 4-speed cover on the 5-speed for this reason.
Inner drivers: the advent of the 16V turbo motor brought new, larger, inner driver cups, and appropriately larger tripot bearings and different driveshafts (the inner splines were larger diameter). At some point, everything got the larger drivers. If you get a transmission with the larger drivers, you can either swap the inner drivers (I'm pretty sure they'll go from the 4 speed box to the 5), or swap driveshafts.
One alternative would to also use the steering knuckles from the later (81-87) car, as the original 99/900 knuckles were heavier, and required complete dis-assembly to swap a brake rotor. And, if you get the bits from a 86-87 turbo, you get ventilated front discs.
Oh - the dipstick tube is also likely to be different. The '79 tube won't seal at all on a late transmission for a 16v. I can't recall exactly when that changed, though, as all the 8V cars had you put the oil in via the valve cover, while the 16vs require that the oil go in via the dipstick. Saab may have made (probably did...) an adapter bushing at some point, but...
In my book, this is only a "bolt-on" or "drop-in" if one can source a 1981-1984 (maybe 1985...) transmission, where one won't have to make any modifications to the gearbox, but only install the 5-speed shifter. If the donor transmission is a 1985/86 or later, it elevates the job complexity. It's not hard, but it is easy to overlook things...
One more thing. Avoid like the plague a 1980 5-speed. These early boxes didn't have needle bearings on one of the important shafts inside the box. The steel shaft(s) rolled in the aluminum case (which I don't think they were expecting), and it enlarged the hole, putting things out of alignment. Not good. Of course, it is highly unlikely that many survived to 32 years of age...
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(#1140) 
[Profile/Gallery]
(more from Larry West) on Wed, 9 Jan 2013 11:04:09
