well, put the eng back in today and... luckily i had one side already pinned cuz i didn't tell my neighbor about the "hair trigger" on the lift and, well, he let it down full slack... pass side was pinned, driver side was not. i was under it ready to pin, but it happened so fast, i don't ever know where the engine hit, on what. i looked the oil pan over, no damage, but damn, i'm a little worried... i was more concerned about getting the eng back up than anything else. i'm thinking it came all the way down on the other mount, but the back end? how far down would it go with no support? i didn't have the pan supported at that time. i think the total "fall" was only an inch or two, mighta' even been lined up on the mount, so probably just fell on it... after being so careful with everything thus far, that was a kicker... btw, no distributor was in it, so no risk there...

KAM

 

More than likely since you were less than 2 inches away from pinning the driver side, I figure the motor mount housing on the engine block took the brunt of the "free fall". If this is the case, I doubt your oil pan hit the cross arm. Still, remove the engine out the engine bay and inspect it. Better now than to have everything connected only to find out engine won’t turn over.

 

If you have the trans out of the car the engine will fall backwards until it hits the firewall. If you had the distributor in when this happend you probably mashed the cap & rotor, but pull it out and make sure it still spins free (i.e. nothing got bent). If the distributor was not in then likely the valve cover stoped it from leaning back any further.

 

upon further review, when i let all the weight off the oil pan, it can't hit the cross member, and after the initial inspection last night, there were no scratches and/or dents, so no worries there. i can also see where the "shell" slid down the mount, so looks like i'll be ok...

KAM