I should preface this part of the story by saying I watched this series of videos on YouTube about removing an engine before attempting to do the same.
P.S. and I went over there, and the guy didn't have change. He was asking $175, so I offered him $160, and he took it!
With the engine free we bolted it onto the engine stand I bought last weekend using bolts from Home Depot. We just took some of the bolts we removed from the bell housing down there to find ones that were longer... it turned out the ones we got were too long, and we needed to cut them to size with a hacksaw. So, for those following along at home, buy a hacksaw when you get these bolts (total cost: right around $10).
So it seems the car-gods had conspired to allow for me to have the money, means, and people to haul that hoist over to my garage.
The first order of business on Saturday was to remove the drive shaft. You can see it running from the end of the transmission (at the middle of the picture) to the differential (at the top left of the picture). There are a couple of U shaped bolts that hold the drive shaft to the differential.
Once you loosen those U bolts you can slip the whole drive shaft forward into the transmission in order to remove it (that tip I got from the above linked videos... God bless the Australians).
Here's a better picture of the U bolts and how the fit on the shaft.
When that was out we plugged the tail of the transmission with this.
Now the trick would be to remove the engine mount bolts from the front of the car, lift up the engine enough to unbolt the engine from the transmission then the engine out of the car, followed by the transmission.
There are two bolts that hold the engine to the engine mounts, one on either side of the engine: driver's side and passenger side (see the picture of the engine bay below).
So P.S. went to work unbolting the engine from the bell housing. When it occurred to us... well not me so much as J.W., that we needed to prop up the front part of the transmission before we lifted the engine out, otherwise it'd crash to the floor once we'd decoupled the engine from the transmission. And it just so happened that I had a long piece of 2x4 that would work great as a brace. So we used it like this:
Which allowed us to remove the engine bolts, and the bolts holding the transmission to the engine and we were about to lift the engine out when I remembered that the flywheel (on the engine) was still attached to the torque converter (on the transmission). So I got under the car and unbolted the three bolts that held it together, however J.W. had to use a wrench to turn the crankshaft on the front of the engine to turn the flywheel so I could access the bolts individually. That's effing team work.
Then attaching the hoist to the lift plate we pulled the engine out.
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| Preparing the hoist. |
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| Houston, we have separation. |
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| She's cleared the engine mounts. |
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| You don't see that everyday. |
A trick to make life easier is to bolt the part adjustable frame onto the engine while it's on the hoist, and just lower that as an assembly onto the engine stand.
Next, we had to lift the transmission out, but we didn't have a good idea how to do that, until J.W. jury rigged the engine lift plate to the transmission... brilliant!
And we lifted the tranny out through the engine bay also.
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| Out. |
All done by 5pm Saturday. For less than the $175 dollars I had planned on spending. Three guys, plus a little bit of prep work, buying the right parts, doing the homework, some good ideas (none of them mine, thanks J.W. and P.S.) and a good dose of luck and we achieved our goal ahead of schedule and under budget.
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| Knuckle buster. |
Next steps: sell the transmission, as it's just in my way; and start stripping the engine down.
Aww yeah. Tear into that beast. Once it's all apart and layed out on the workbench you can start dreaming of all the sweet hi performance parts you'll reassemble with once the block comes back from the machinists.
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