I am getting ready to pull the motor out of my 1987 iroc and was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks that I should know about before starting. I am replacing it with the same motor, a 5.7 long block from Advance Auto. I have never pulled a motor out of anything before. I have done a lot of small jobs on cars so I do know what I am doing under the hood, just never pulled an engine before. Any help you guys could offer would be great.

 

Pay attention to details, take lots of pictures, label every hose and cable you disconnect, sort your fasteners into small boxes or bags so the don't get lost and label the boxes or bags so you don't have to remember where they go.

 

Already got over 30 pictures of under the hood so far, and plan on having my wife take more as I go so that if i do forget something I will have something to fall back on. I hope that I am not back here in a few weeks asking "does anyone know where this goes" LOL. Thanks for the tips

 

Take the car to the quarter car wash first and clean it up.

Rent a cherry picker; worth every penny. Don't actually go get it (start paying for it) until the motor is ABSOLUTELY READY to jump up out of there.

Don't try to find "shortcuts" or get out of doing work. Whenever you do that, it ends up taking twice as long and being twice as much work, as whatever work you thought you were going to get out of.

Remove the AC system from the motor AS A UNIT, WITHOUT disconnecting any lines. YOu can remove the compressor from the motor and the condenser from in front of the rad and lay them over to the side out of the way, and not discharge it. Same for the power steering.

Get the top bell housing bolt on each side from above with a SHORT box/open end combo wrench, after removing the distributor.

 

I am going to buy a cherry picker, the only place near me wants 70 a day, so buying one will only cost a little more.
I have already taken all of the cooling system out of the car and don't plan on putting it back in. I never used it anyway.
Thanks for the tips about the bell housing bolts, I was wondering how to get to them.

 

I always use oven cleaner on a car I am about to go through. I also like the plastic baggies to store small parts and mark them with a black marker.

 

Ii always put painters tape around wires and label them to remember hatehag they are

 

It is not a Motor It is call Engine

 

Best tip ever:

JACK THE BACK OF THE CAR UP ABOUT 24".


This allows y ou to pull the engine and transmission out together easily.


Remove the hood also if you didn't figure tgat out yet. Mark the position of the bolts that vonnect the hood to the brackets. Otherwise its hell getting the hood lined up properly.


Goodluck!

 

Whether it's better to pull them out together or separately is a matter of preference.

 

It is not a motor, it is called an engine.
If you are going to correct someone make sure you know how to talk first.

 

Thanks everyone for all of the great tips. I think that I am going to pull just the engine out and leave the transmission in the car. I am doing everything alone so I think that pulling just the engine out would make things a little bit easier on me.

 

Be careful when purchasing a longblock because a lot of places will give you an L05 with the swirl port (193) heads. They will tell you it is correct for your application, but it is not. You have an L98 with 083 castings and so should the replacement engine.

If the engine has 193 heads it probably has the smaller L05 cam too.

 

for when the engine is out always can , put the car on jack stands spray the engine bay and undercarrage of the car down with simple green then wait about 15-30 mils and put a sprinkler under the car and it will clean when your done. just make sure electrical connections are sealed off.

( this is how I clean my jeep's underside )


Also rember pictures are worth it, take your time , if you get mad take a break ,do not continue most likly something will end up breaking . uses penatrating oil on rusted parts ....let them soak! use ziplock bags and sharpies I don't know how many times I was like pff I don't have to put stuff in bags I'll just throw it in the box and I will remeber where it goes. yeh I always ended up forgetting or the project ended up taking way longer and then forgot.

If you are unsure of something just come on here post up and someone here will give ya an answer!

Best of luck to you.

 

Just an update...

I found a guy selling a 1988 Camaro and have bought it instead of just another engine for mine. I will be doing the swap in a couple months (have to save up some money for it). The new Camaro already has aftermarket heads and headers so that will save a little money in the long run with upgrades. It also has a built up trans with a 2500 converter. I have looked around on both the cars and have not seen anything to major that will give me a problem switching them. A longer cable from the battery to the alt is about the only thing I have seen. If anyone knows any problems I might run into let me know.

Thanks to everyone for the help so far.

 

start under the car- unhook the exhaust, starter, torque converter, etc first. also get the bellhousing and motor mount bolts while you are under there. this will be the worst part of the job, and it's best to get it out of the way first... the last thing you do under the car is drain the coolant and oil- that way, you won't be wiggling around under the car with those things dripping all over you.
beyond that, it's pretty straight forward- just unhook everything until the engine comes out, and try to keep track of what goes where. for the most part, everything only goes in one place so it's not as complicated as some people like to pretend it is..
if it's a TBI engine, get a carb lift plate and drill the 3 bolt TBI mounting pattern in it... it's much easier to use than chains..

 

Find an assistant too. Even if you can do it yourself, a job like that is always easier with two heads.

 

I have started taking out my engine, so far no problems but only just started. I have the front clip off and just got the passenger side exhaust manifold off. As well as all of the accessory drive system. I will try to keep everyone that has helped me up to date on how everything is going and might have a few more questions by the time it's all over with.

 

Looks like you are already making progress. Post up some pictures! One thing to do is spray rusty bolts with PB blaster or some kind of penetrant weeks before you need to unbolt it. I didn't see that posted already. Buy a kit of valve cover studs if you ever work on the engine yourself. http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS-Performan...50148/10002/-1

Also you will find that a very long pry bar will come in handy a lot.

 

One suggestion I have is to make sure you get the big cherry picker, not the 1 ton toy that some places sell. While the 1 ton is strong enough to do the job, it doesn't have enough reach to get directly over the motor from the front unless you pull the front bumper cover off the car, which is a lot of work. You can go in from the side, but in my experience, that's a pain too, because as the motor comes up, you want to be able to easily move it forward.

As you can see from this pic, even with the big one there's barely enough room. I wound up needing to stand on the back of my cherry picker to keep it off my bumper. In this pic you can see how far forward the engine already is, and how close the cherry picker is to my bumper. I had to tape that foam to the front of my bumper, and the cherry picker was up against it for a while.

 

Ran into a problem, how do I get to the nuts on the bottom of the motor mounts?

already have some pb blaster, and it's helped a lot so far.

 

here is the pic I took last week when working on it

 

So that is where I am at right now. Almost everything taken off and disconnected but a few things here and there. Mainly the Motor Mounts... HINT HINT (need help trying to figure out a way to get to them)

 

Ok Finally found some posts about the mounts, heading out the door to see if the tips from those posts will help.

 

Just pull the one long bolt out of each side when you're pulling the engine.

 

and it's out....




I didn't have really any big snags and for it being my first time pull an engine out, I think it went very well. I can't thank all the members of this site and the site it's self enough. This website has helped me out more times than I can count. Now I have to do it all over again on the donor car, but step one of three is done.

 

Donor engine is out! One problem I have so far is that the donor had custom exhaust on it and I don't think it's going to match up with the stock on my car. It's not that big of a problem since there is a muffler shop about a mile down the road from me, I just hope I don't get pulled over on the way there for running the car with about 3 feet of exhaust with no muffler or cat.

 

Ok guys time has come that I have no clue whats going on. The engine turns over and just when it's about to start, it shuts all the electronics off. Almost like someone pulls the cables off the battery right before it starts. What could cause this to happen???

 

maybe check your grounds, make sure alt is good, check all wires/cables, go by your starter and check to see if your fusible links are not corroded to hell