Yeah yeah yeah..I know...plenty of threads covering engine removal, just search :P

I've just spent a few hours looking at threads on a bunch of different forums, and my eyes have gone crossed looking at umpteen billion threads bickering back and forth between what's better...top or bottom, lol.

My problem - I have a sloped driveway that I'll be working in, and I'll need to roll the car to another area about 100 feet away once the engine is out, so I'm not real wild about jacking the car sky high to get everything out the bottom, nor putting the suspension back together afterwards.

I understand that taking the engine out the top is more involved, but that doesn't bother me. I'm in absolutely no hurry to get this done. If it takes a week, then it takes a week..no biggie.

The engine will be going in a different vehicle with a full tube frame front and quick release body panels, so the front end can be torn down to just open frame rails in about five minutes (with other parts also being used in that vehicle), and will be getting torn down and refreshed before going in said vehicle. I'll be pulling the exhaust and radiator as well. If I also pull the intake, will I have easy to get to mount points for lifting chains, and still be able to pull the engine? Ideally the T56 comes with the engine too, but I don't consider it a real big deal to pull the trans first either. Perhaps pull the heads as well?

My big thing here is that I don't really want to invest in expensive parts/tools that I'll likely only use one time (i.e - happy hooker).

 

i believe you could undo the exhaust from under the car, take off ur intake manifold the heads dnt have to come off, u can reach the motor mounts just un-tighten the mount bolts but have a chain to catch the slack before u take them out u will needs to un hook any wires from the engine and get them out the way. take the radiator and the thing in front of it and the fans out, this will give u enough room to move the engine forward, with the intake manifold being off it will allow u to tilt the engine and pull the engine and tranny out the top but u will need to unhook anything that is connected to the tranny and engine make sure nothing will catch. i done this not too long ago after hearing that it was not possible i did it with ease in less then 10 hrs

 

I just got mine put back in and went out and in the top with the happy hooker. Its very useful in a few ways you may not see. It will let you pick motor and tranny out the top obviously but the other places its handy is pulling motor off of engine stand to put flywheel an clucth and tranny back on or putting block on stand from crate or whatever. I was able to do all those things with no help and very convienant. In fact I set my tranny in a wheelbarrow I had all padded and that worked our great for alingment of tranny and easy. Movement and storage of tranny. The one concern is if you have a stripped out hole on manifold its spooky with four small bolts holding motor and tranny. I had to repair my manifold with a threaded insert as whomever helicioled over bored the hole or over torqued the fuel rail bolt. Just somethings to consider.

 

if you are going to freshen the engine, pull the heads. Very quick and easy to do. You will be very appreciative of the extra room you have if you are goung out the top.

 

I was thinking about that...the passenger side head needs to get pulled anyways due to one of the exhaust manifold bolt holes being stripped out. I was just concerned about having the leverage to pull the heads out of the car without dropping one.