This is a project in patience, I think that is the biggest thing I am learning...The only piece of mind I get is knowing that since you guys got it done I can too.

My current headache: Getting the engine and tranny into the car. When I took them out, I did one at a time, the tranny came out from underneath and the engine came out alone on a hoist (for the old LB9 and 700R4). The LT1and 4L60E came out together, but that was out of a Caprice, I think the hood opens up higher and I managed to pull everything at once w/o issue.

When you guys dropped the new motor/trans in, did you do it separately, or together?

Right now, I have the back end of the car jacked up a bit to raise the tranny tunnel and lower the nose. This is helping but not much. I also took the hood off to get the crane in further, but now I am hitting the nose of the car with the crane....

 

Use a load leveler, best thing in the world to use to put a motor/tranny in the car together. I put in my LT1/T56 in one piece and never hit anything, just took my time and actually rolled the car forward instead of moving the cherry picker.

 

Here is a snapshot of how I "levelled" my load...

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...697_6_full.jpg

Then I loosened the tie down to lower the tranny in to the tunnel while holding the engine up...

I still don't have it seated on the motor mounts, that is my goal for today, mounting everthing mechanically. My headers are supposed to be delivered today so that should be right on time!

 

which heads are those?

 

AFR 195cc. Hopefully they are as good as they say they are. I realize now (after being on TGO and CZ28.com boards) that I may have been better off spending the money on a Lloyd Elliot package but live and learn right?

I am waiting for the headers to come in still, the UPS tracking number shows it left the shipping dock at 08:12 this morning. The dock is only 10 minutes from me but apparently I am on the way home for the delivery guy because they aren't here yet!

 

Headers arrived, I ordered the wrong ones apparently. They are oval port while my heads are D port. Oh well, guess I will have to wait for the replacements.

Any one switching in an LT1 from a Caprice make sure you switch the motor mounts to the Third Gen ones before you try to put the motor in. The Caprice mount on the passenger side is cut differently and won't line up.

 

your life will be so much easier if you take the hood off and use the hoist on the side of the car. This way you won't hit the nose of the car on the hoist. This is my opinion though.

 

Yeah, I did take the hood off. Didn't take too long to figure that one out after I had everything hanging over the front of the car.

Unfortunately, I didn't think of coming in from the side of the car. That probably would have been smarter.

 

Dude...that is slick..thanks...I going to pirate your idea when I do my install.