Saab 9-3 Turbo X Project

I want to start writing my projects in english to make it easier for the international Saab ebthousiasts. This will be my first post so please forgive me if my grammar and or writing is not a 100 percent.

About a year ago i got the oppertunity to buy one of the few original Dutch manual Turbo x saloons with all options from the factory. This was an oppertunity i had to take.

For years i had been dreaming about upgrading the station turbo X to higer performance levels, however i knew that the automatic gearbox would be one of the things that would eventualy start to be an issue. That kept me from doing so.

Now with the manual gearbox it was a completely different situation. There are possibilities to upgrade the gearbox and so the project begun.

This is the Turbo X we are talking about :

The turbo X has driven around 176 thousand kms and needs a full revitalising treatment. The previous owner has taken as good as possible care, however a lot of thechnical things arent widely known regarding preventing maintenance and how to keep a B284/A28NEX in prestige condition.

Based on my experience i have decided to start building a second engine to keep the original stock and downtime to a minumum. When you start building an engine it can take up to 8 months to get everything together, back in the saab and driving as it should. there are a lot of diffculties when it comes to deliver A1 quality.

The beginning of disassembling another B284R engine that had chain issues.

The whole idea of this project is to do everything ourself, that means valve lapping aswell. I found out that grinding the valve seals ourself did not give me the satisfaction that i was looking for. For the best results i brought the valves to the machinery. That gave me the results i was looking for. smooth valves and valve seats with perfect vacuum. I cleaned all the parts myself before going to the machinery, loaded everything in the back of the work car of the misses.

DIY Valve grinding wich did not gave the results i was looking for:

And this is after valve grinding at the machinery: