Hello,

I was wondering if its possible to drop the motor and tranny into a thirdgen in one piece or if I will need to seperate the two?

SB

 

Sure you can drop them in together...that's how I did mine. It made it a lot easier. Just make sure you have a friend with you to help guide the transmission in place.

 

Excellent. Thanks for the response.

SB

 

I pulled them out together and put them back in together.

Its actually alot easy to install the motor & tranny as a unit than doing them one at a time.

 

Thats what I was hoping to hear. Did either of you do it with your manifolds or headers attached? I have SLP headers, but I have heard that they can have clearance issues with the brake lines and was curious if I should install them before or after installing the motor.

SB

 

I tried to install my 355 and th350 in together with my Summit shortie headers bolted on, but there was no way that was going to happen. Ended up dropping the motor/trans in w/o the headers, then bolting them up later from underneath. good luck!

 

I installed mine seperately, but mainly because I was doing it by myself and didn't want to destroy anything in the way.
I'd plan on putting the headers on after it's in.My SLP's were pretty tight, especially on the driver's side.Ended up jacking the motor up a little off the mounts to drop that one in, before bolting it up.
-Rich-

 

Good advice guys, thanks. Ill leave the headers until the motor is in.

I cant wait to get a motor back in this SOB. Its only been out for about 2 years now.

SB

 

I seen you boys with cameros doing swaps in one peice and I did my 86 bird in one peice but I ran into problems with the nose sticking out too far to get motor far enough back to slide over motor mounts, was it just a fake cherry picker (boom not long enough) or has this happened before? After the ordeal I went through I'll sell the car before I think about another engine swap.

 

I ran into the problem with the nose, the short cherry picker and the motor mounts. I had to jack up the tailshaft on the tranny and that brought it closerm to lining up with the mounts. Then I set the engine down on the middle of the mount and moved the hook further up on the engine chain. Lifted again and moved it back some more.

Repeated this a time or two and finally got it in there. Thanks to all for the advice.

SB

 

We goofed by using one of those engine equilerizers so you could tilt the motor back & forth-that part worked great till it exploded (grandpa took hand crank off and welded double nut on so you could use an air impact to tilt it, weld broke) and dropped my motor/tranny about 3" luckily no damage-but we had the chains too short-so like you said we lowered it and lenghtened the chains to have some swing in it and that helped. I tell ya though, this motor swap was the most time consuming one I've ever attemped-alot of cussing and sweating. Just was'nt meant to be. (very long story) But like always it all worked out and I'm happy as hell so far.

 

I put my engine in with the passenger side SLP header in place, but the driver side wouldn't go, had to remove the header.

~M~

 

I had remembered when I pulled the motor I had to remove the manifold on the one side, but I wasnt sure about putting it back in that way.

SB

 

wrong post sorry