Disaster!!!

So with the engine in and all wired up we started to fill it with fluids. Water went in, leaked from various places, tightened things up, water stopped leaking. Realised that you have to have almost perfect size matches i.e. you can't get away with putting a 40mm hose on a 38mm pipe - it'll leak! No matter how tight you tighten it.

Oil filled up, leaked everywhere - forgot to tighten the oil unions in a couple of places which seems pretty basic but it's easily done!! Also the oil filter leaked slightly as there's so little chassis clearance you can't get a good hold.

Put clutch fluid in, spend ages bleeding it but no pressure in the pedal. Eventually found the fluid dripping out of the gearbox bellhousing... NOOOooooo...

So it appears that the seals are gone on the slave cylinder, so engine out again. This is very depressing - the car looks a mess again and it almost looks the same as it did a year ago. These things happen I guess - the lesson here is don't trust anything, check it before fitting; a few minutes saved can prevent days of misery later.

From Zero 050611

From Zero 050611

One concern is the actual use of the Saab flywheel and Omega clutch. When we put the engine and g'box together we measured clutch face to engine block, and slave cylinder to bellhousing mounting face. These appeared to match so all was thought ok. But its possible the slave cylinder had been locked in the out position from being over-extended. Reading up more, it seems that as we're using a normal saab flywheel, not the thicker dual mass omega flywheel, we have some extra space to take up. This means we might need a spacer under the slave cylinder.