The Saturn is signed, sealed, and almost delivered!

So I missed my goal to get the Saturn finished by a week. I did have a good excuse though. I picked up a truck for the shop and in the process, I hurt my back. I wanted to have the Saturn finished last Saturday but there was no way I was going to be able to go out in the garage and crawl around with my back feeling the way it was. I even delegated my mowing to Steven. I love mowing the grass and that's one of the reasons I haven't had either of my boys mow it. I was in enough pain to pass the lawn mowing baton to Steven. For last week anyways. Here is Steven mowing. He did an awesome job and was a big help to me. Our lawn was really long and so it had to be mowed.

I was able to button up the engine by putting on the intake and exhaust manifold, the valve cover and a few other things. It was ready and waiting to be installed just in time for Friday.

I left the plugs out until the engine was installed so that it would turn over easier when I was hooking up the torque converter. I also took some time and cleaned out the intake and throttle body. I was glad I did because it was FILTHY. I am not talking a little dirty, I am talking FILTHY. It made my solvent in my solvent tank pretty dirty. I installed a new gasket on the throttle body and torqued everything down.

I still left the crank pulley off so I could have a little extra wiggle room for the install.

I actually pushed the car into the garage when I unloaded the truck last Friday so it was ready to go. I had Dixie help me pull the hood off and got the engine compartment ready.

I decided to try my newly designed load leveler out for the first time. Here you can see it installed and I had plenty of height to install the engine even with the car jacked up.

Getting it into position. I opted to leave the starter on even though it was fairly tight when I pulled the engine out. It went in just fine. I installed it myself but if you had another person it would help.

You have to make sure you have everything lined up underneath. If your using a cherry picker you need to snake it in between the jack stands and the floor jack that is supporting the transmission up. It's tight but it will work.

Be really careful on the firewall and the throttle body. It is pretty tight here and the intake manifold is plastic. It is possible to break things if your not careful.

The load leveler worked like a charm. If you want to see what modifications I did to mine look back a few posts. I have it all there.

Here is the front of the car. It's a little tight here also. I kept the radiator and the fans in. If you took them out you would have room to spare. It just adds up to more work though and it is very doable to get the engine out and in with them still installed.

Here it is with the bell housing bolted together and the engine mounts installed. Just need to install the spark plugs and the crank pulley.

Fast forward to the finished product. I forgot to take any more pictures along the way. The engine actually looks better than this. I cleaned it up a little more before I put the hood on. The engine runs great. I had one unusual cough right after I started it up and then it smoothed out and runs good. It has good power and is pretty quiet when running. It should be good for another 150,000 miles.

The owner is coming to pick it up in the morning. It will be a good thing because the driveway is getting pretty full. I don't want the neighbors complaining.

I pretty much finished it up Friday. I just had to install the hood today so I had time to mow my lawn. I then changed the oil and sharpened the blade on the mower. I also cleaned up the garage. It's always nice to finish up a big project like this. It's even nicer when everything runs like it should. More projects for the shop to come.