99 Turbo update

Had a good series of developments on the 99 Turbo project. I found an ad on Saabnet's classified for a '78 99 Turbo, with a "spare short block and assorted parts" an hour west of my house. I emailed the guy, and he got back to me right away. Long story short, the car is going to someone else, and I got the engine and associated parts. The head is bad (cracked between #2 and #3 exhaust valves), which is fine since the head on the KaBoom engine wasn't hurt.

So, in exchange for a rather nice bottle of single-malt Scotch, I now have a good B-engine, completely disassembled (with the bolts in nicely labeled plastic bags even). The bores look good, measure well within spec (could make out cross-hatching from what is probably the original build). I cleaned it up and have started putting it back together.

The hole in the tranny (visible in some of the photos in the link below) was small and has been patched. I talked with a Saab master tech before I did this, and he's comfortable with doing it the way I did because of where on the case it is. Comments are welcome.

Question for the group. The engine was taken apart pretty much "just because". The crank measures well within spec, no spalling or marks to indicate I should have it turned. If I plastigage the bearings and they're in spec, is there any reason to replace them? They look fine, and the journals look fine, and so on. Can I resuse them if they're in spec?

Also, I plan to do all new seals, but aside from the head gasket, is there any critical gasket on the engine that can't or shouldn't be replaced with (blue? copper?) permatex?

New pictures at

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"Cleanup and preparation of new engine". Dave Hinz

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Dave Hinz
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