OK, the transmission jack is in my possession, everyone has gathered, and it’s time to try (once again) to finally get the engine out…

The transmission has been firmly strapped to the jack, which now supports its weight. The engine is still hooked up to the hoist, waiting to be freed.

Time to unbolt the bellhousing-to-block bolts! Four of the six are easy to reach, but are gorilla-tight nevertheless. The other two are accessible only with a lot of extensions. I had to abandon the 3/8" drive and switch to 1/2" when I discovered I could get a good 15 degrees of deflection on the wrench end without breaking the bolts loose. Note: Although it may look like I weigh 450lbs in this picture, it’s just an optical illusion. Really.

With the bolts removed, the only thing holding the engine and transmission together was the locating dowels. Here, Michael persuades them to part company with a dead-blow hammer while I adjust the jack to take the preload off the joint.

A little prying on both sides, and the transmission comes loose!

I said, "the transmission comes loose", dammit!

Haha! You can’t do this with them still connected!

Of course, it’s traditional to forget about the ground straps until you have them pulled banjo-string tight…

Oh, and the sensor plugs on the back of the engine, too.

And of course, those pesky transmission cooler hardlines that are still clipped somehow to the underside of the block.

Some prying with a big screwdriver fixed that little problem!

Almost there!

Tada! It’s out! Don’t worry about Michael - he’s not really having a seizure there in the background. Also note the giddy smile on my face…

Michael removes the flexplate and bolts up the engine stand.

Some pictures of the hole where the engine used to be. Time to go and buy a case of degreaser…

What can it mean? The obligatory shot of the mysterious numbers written on the firewall…

So now I can get down to the fun part of taking stuff apart and actually having room to work!

Here’s the driver’s side (top) and passenger’s side (bottom) motor mounts. Gee, I wonder why the engine was able to rock over far enough to cut the radiator hose…

The compressor inlet. The wheel looks pretty good, considering the truck’s mileage. No noticeable erosion is apparent at first glance. We’ll have to see what the rest of it looks like before I decide whether I’ll just slap it back on again, though.

The turbine outlet. Again, it looks to be in pretty good shape. There’s a tiny bit of play in the bearing when you try to move the wheels up and down or side to side, but none at all along the axis of the turbine.

All in all, this felt like the most productive day of work so far, but that may just be because I’ve reached this milestone. In reality, I’m not even at the half-way point yet, because the engine still needs to be stripped down to recover the parts that will go back on the new one. But it sure feels good to finally have it out…

At this point, I can say that I’m awestruck by the people who do this all the time on these trucks. While it’s possible for a normal guy such as myself to do it (provided he has access to a well-equipped shop, plenty of patience and help from The List, and all the time in the world), I wouldn’t want to do it on a regular basis.