I am swapping a a 305 TPI for a 350 and I was wondering what your guys' thoughts was about pulling the tranny or not. I kinda feel like pulling the tranny out the bottom, then attaching to new motor and installing engine and tranny at once. When I swapped the clutch I had problems getting the tranny back on, so I don't really want to go through that again.

Any opinions?
Thanks.

 

Easiest way is to leave the trans and bell housing in the car. Leave the trans bolted to the crossmember, shifter installed, etc.

The hardest thing for most people to actually accomplish, with the tools that most people have available to them, is to put the motor and trans back into the car together. I would NOT do it that way no matter what. The next hardest thing is to pull them tigether. The problem is getting it all up high enough, given the angle that the trans will be hanging at. Doing it without making a mess of transmission fluid just adds to the whole hassle.

Assemble the clutch onto the motor, using an alignment tool, before dropping it back into the car. Make sure the alignment tool slips freely out of and fully back into the clutch, and you will then have no problems with the trans fitting in easily as well.

 

I put in and pulled out my ls1/t56 togther a dozen of times this summer(motor mounts not exactly right, few trial and errors), but anyways i got pretty good at it. Real easy if you got two people, just have one controlling the cherry picker and the other in the engine bay and just pull down on the back of the tranny, then have the other lower it. Takes about 1 min.

 

Another way of pulling engine and tranny together is to remove the front clip. This provides easy access to the engine bay and you won't have to lift so high. It makes it real easy to re-install too. The only drawback to this is it creates more work because you have to re-install your front clip. But I recommend pulling them together especially if it's an automatic. It's a royal pita to install the converter bolts laying on your back in the driveway like I have to do!

 

I am confused, how does removing the front clip going to help? The rad support doesn't come off and that is the first thing in the way?

 

It is much easier to line up the trans to the clutch, than to fiddle around with the shifter, the torque arm, and all that, LAYING ON THE GROUND UNDER THE CAR; let alone pulling the entire front clip, even in cars such as the El Camino where that's even possible, unlike our cars. That's doing several times as much work in total, as compared to just dropping the motor in.

The notion that 3 converter bolts are more difficult than pulling a front clip or whatever, is laughable. In auto cars (unlike Amorget's) it usually takes me less than 5 minutes to put the TC bolts in.

I STRONGLY recommend leaving the transmission and bell housing in place. You'll spend less time laying on the ground, turn fewer bolts, make less mess of pouring fluid all over everywhere, have an easier time lifting the engine high enough to get it over the core support and out of the car with the cherry pickers you can usually rent, etc. etc. etc.

Incidentally, the top 2 bell housing bolts will come RIGHT OUT, from above, with a short box-end wrench. Take out the distributor (which you have to do anyway), and you can stand there and just reach in and grab them. You can usually also get the next 2 down the same way.

 

I am thinking I am going to leave it alone. The transmission fluid issue is as much of an issue as anything else. That stuff stinks to work worth in general.

I havea very nice garage to work in, so being under the car isn't really an issue as far as unhooking torque arm, etc. I replaced the clutch with minimal issues outside of getting the darn tranny back onto the motor. Hopefully that part will go easier this time.

Here is the problem that I then think... how the heck do you get the motor in without smashing it into the transmission? Seems you would need to move the transmission back just like a couple inches to get the engine in there, then move it back forward and hook it up.

Thanks!
Douglas

 

Actually it's easier the other way....

Loosen the trans mount (don't remove anything, just loosen it), move it as far forward as it will go and jack it up, so that the motor meets it before it reaches the mounts; line up and mate the motor and trans in that forward/raised position; then lower and slide them rearward. If you do it like that, you don't have to touch the torque arm.

 

Thanks, I appreciate the help greatly!