I want to take off the body of my car back to the firewall, down to the frame. This will allow me to remove my engine and tranny at the same time out the front of my car. It will also allow me to really clean things up and help with the reinstallation of the engine and tranny later on down the line. How would I go about doing this, I have removed the nose, bumber and radiator already. Where do I need to look for the bolts and about how many bolts are we talking about? Thanks in advance for all your input.

Skull Leader

 

There's alot of bolts.... these cars aren't put together at all like, say, a Chevelle; where there's about 5 bolts that hold the fenders to the firewall and 2 big mounts that hold the entire front cap to the frame.

Look all around the fenders. There's about 5 or 6 at least down each side along the top, and a couple around the cowl and doors; and various ones underneath them that you can get to when you take the inner liner out. There's about 8 that hold the bumper reinforcement to the "frame". Seems like about 4 or 5 each side that hold the core support to the "frame". Quite a few bolts in other words.

Seems like kind of the hard way to do it; unless you need to replace some of the body parts.

 

you cant really do that with these cars..... the "frame" rails are welded/bonded to the body, the inner fenders are a structual support thats welded in, ect....


the only thing you can unbolt is the urathane nose and the outer fender skin... thats about it..

 

you can still pull the engine and transmission out together,with the front end intact. make sure you take out the distributor first though.The distributor was the only thing that hit the firewall. just go slow and easy,and you should have no problems. i have swapped the 305 in my 84 firebird to a 350 ,and pulled the old engine and tranny together ,and then installed the 350 with the tranny bolted to it in the car.pataince is the key word.