SAAB Turbo engine into Dolomite 1850

[misterbob]

Greetings all. Posting this partly on behalf of my friend Matt, who's Triumph Dolomite I work on with him.

'Delilah' is a 1979 Triumph Dolomite 1850HL with four speed O/D transmission.

As is well documented, SAAB produced a version of the Triumph Slant Four engine which was initially fitted in the SABB 99.
Turbo charged versions of that engine were used in the 99 and latterly I believe the 900 Turbo.

You can probably see where we're going with this!

Has anyone on here ever done this conversion?

Obviously the SAAB installation is FWD, with the engine rotated 180 degrees compared to the Triumph installtion.
I know that there are (obviously) significant internal differences to the engines too.

Sorting out the electrics shouldn't be too hard (I'm pretty confident with car electrics), the main questions are:
Would the 1850 box (or indeed a dolly Sprint box) mate up to the SAAB Turbo engine?
Would the SAAB Turbo engine bolt up to the Triumph chassis mounts or would new mounts have to be made/crossmember modified etc.

Cheers, Bob.

[vitesseefi]

I don't want to appear negative but I think that apart from very early Saab stuff, there is almost nothing common with Triumph. I think Saab twigged that the Triumph stuff wasn't very good.....

As regards the gearbox, the 1850 box is marginal with the standard engine anyway. The Sprint box is a fair bit stronger and used an adaptor plate to mate it to the engine. If the Saab lump did turn out to have a compatible bell housing pattern then you could also consider the TR7 version of the LT77 5 speed.

TBH, if desperate to go the Saab Turbo route then probably best off using one of the later engines with a GM 5-speed.

Cheers

Nick

[welshpug]

Apr 16, 2014 19:24:57 GMT misterbob said:

Obviously the SAAB installation is FWD, with the engine rotated 180 degrees compared to the Triumph installtion.

Nope, they sat longitudinally with the clutch&flywheel on the front and gearbox underneath, diff at the back like a transaxle

[RobinJI]

Apr 16, 2014 21:31:30 GMT welshpug said:

Apr 16, 2014 19:24:57 GMT misterbob said:

Obviously the SAAB installation is FWD, with the engine rotated 180 degrees compared to the Triumph installtion.

Nope, they sat longitudinally with the clutch&flywheel on the front and gearbox underneath, diff at the back like a transaxle

So yes, 180deg to the triumph, where the flywheel's at the back, not the front.

I don't know how far the link with triumph's go, but having been interested in the past by the quirky box set-up those Saabs use I suspect the block may well be modified quite a bit to make the box mate up properly.

[metroman]

You also have to keep in mind the very limited space between the exhaust ports and the inner wing / chassis rail. That will be the main issue. At the end of the day the engine was never great either in Triumph or Saab form.

I understand that the early Saab block is interchangeable and is better than the Triumph block with extra material around the mains IIRC.

Source www.saabrally.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1535&start=15

James

[froggy]

b204/234 engine from the 94-98 900/9000 coupled to an omega gearbox is the simplest way of getting saab power with the trionic t5 management system . plenty of these conversions floating around the internet and ive been making stuff to get around the sump /inlet manifold issues for the last few years .

[ejenner]

I'd stick with the slant engine rather than the upright as the upright engine is designed to fit into transverse mounted configuration.

As per above comments. I wouldn't bother with the early Saab engine but it should be pointed out that it's far from weak or poor quality. It was used in the works rally Saab turbos with 300hp by the time Saab stopped rallying. The part which fails soonest is the shaft driven water pump and distributor sitting on the top of the engine.

The reason I wouldn't bother with the earlier engine is that the later engine is far more plentiful and the parts are still available. I have 9 of those later engines sitting here with me in the workshop at the moment. They can eaisly be modified to run the amazing trionic 5.5 engine management just by fitting a machined flywheel with pickup slots for the crank sensor. It's also 16v.

What also works in your favour when it comes to choosing the later engine over the earlier one is that we often convert early 99 chassis to run the later 16v engine and there's no fabrication involved as the original mounts are in the same place for both engines. I'd be surprised therefore if a conversion to a early Saab engine wouldn't be any different at all to a conversion to a late one.

I suppose the only downside of the canted engine is that they're all pre-94 design for the bell housing. So it's not going to mate with any of the GM standardised rear wheel drive transmissions. Having said that, the GM transmissions aren't the only ones which have been used. There are other options including Ford and BMW transmissions. It's simply the case that during the early nineties GM standardised bolt patterns for all engine / transmission combinations so it can take out some of the headache.