April 25, 2001

Since Michael is:

1. Impatient, especially when faced with my extremely deliberate methodology for this process, and
2. Very sure of himself when it comes to yanking things out of cars,

We decided to take a shot at pulling the transmission even though I don’t have my special high-zoot transmission jack yet. The reasoning was that getting it out would be easy - putting it back in would be where we needed the adjustability and stability of a transmission jack. Things didn’t quite work out the way I hoped…

Before removing the transmission, the manual (and common sense) dictates that these hard lines running from the passenger side of the transmission just behind the torque converter cover need to be removed. They run up forward to the transmission cooler built into the radiator, and are already loose at the other end. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get any sort of a wrench on those nuts with the transmission still in the truck…

So, in a fit of bravado, I said, "Let’s try to get the engine and transmission out as a unit!". Michael loved that idea and set to work pulling things off the engine that looked like they’d be in the way. The distributor was first to go. You know, that hold-down bolt is really easy to get off when the upper intake manifold isn’t in the way. Too bad you can’t set the timing like that.

We didn’t bother to mark the distributor or anything, since we’re changing long block assemblies and are going to have to find TDC anyway. I was considering replacing the distributor with one of the newly-available MSD stock replacements, but after looking at the old one, I may just rebuild it. It’s really the only part I’ve pulled so far that looks better than I expected it to.

The trigger assembly is a little gronky, but compared to some of the horror stories I’ve heard, it doesn’t look all that bad. It’s all going to be replaced anyway, and the housing and shaft are in good shape.

The starter came right out, too. I think this will probably be a good candidate for replacement, eh? And what’s with that weird foam gasket?

Time for the cherry picker! Or so we thought… Not shown is the Epic Struggle to get the motor mount through-bolts out. The passenger side came out OK, but a heat shield on the driver’s side made it a real problem to get a wrench on the nut to keep it from turning. We finally got it, but not without a bunch of wasted effort.

With the equalizer tilted and the chains pulled in to clear the firewall, no matter how we manipulated the engine/transmission combination we couldn’t get to clear. It wiggled around just fine, indicating that there wasn’t anything still attached, but no amount of fiddling around with it would get it to come free.

Here’s why. The oil pan sump won’t come far enough forward to let the bell housing clear the firewall because of the interference of the front axle. So in retrospect, it may very well be possible to remove the engine and transmission as a unit - just not by us.

So where does that leave us? Well, The List once again provides, with several people making the obvious-enough-to-totally-escape-me suggestion of unbolting the transmission and taking the engine out first, leaving those pesky lines right where they are until the engine is out of the way and we have all the room in the world to lower the transmission and dork around with them. So in the end, I’m back to waiting for that jack to arrive, just with more bits and pieces loose…