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Long story short, will probably put my engine back in the car long before the tranny is ready to go back in. How much trouble is it to bolt the tranny on the engine with the engine in the car? Also suggestions on bracing the rear of the engine would be appreciated. If I put the engine in now I can full wire it & assemble the rest of the engine compartment.
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
It depends on the year of your car, which you haven't specified. The earlier cars with the fixed crossmember are a real pain to install the tranny after the engine - you can save yourself a ton of hassle by waiting until the tranny is done and installing the tranny bolted to the engine. The later cars with the removable crossmember have easy tranny installation access, to there's no problem.
You don't need to support the rear of the engine as long as you remove your distributor cap. The engine will hang on the engine mounts with no problem.
Two upper bolts are a PIA to get to unless you have an overly long wrench
Mine is an automatic so removable cross-member.
Biggest issue I had was I could get the car up on stands high enough to slide the transmission under it but not while it was on a jack. So once it was under the car in the tunnel I had to get the heavy pig up onto the small floor jack at it's balance point. If you have a hoist or some other way of getting the car up higher it'd make life a lot easier.
Once it was on the jack it was fairly easy
When I removed the transmission I placed a padded block under the rear of the oilpan just to help keep it supported a little, basically just took the pressure off the mounts
M
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
As Mooser stated, it's a PITA to install the tranny after the engine is installed... You will save yourself a ton of cursing and Band-Aids if you wait until you have the tranny. Bolt the tranny to the engine. Drop the entire assembly in and make your life easy.
This is a non-removable crossmember car:
How about those Norwegians in the Olympics? We thank the South Koreans for hosting the Norwegian winter championships in their country....
It depends on the year of your car, which you haven't specified. The earlier cars with the fixed crossmember are a real pain to install the tranny after the engine - you can save yourself a ton of hassle by waiting until the tranny is done and installing the tranny bolted to the engine. The later cars with the removable crossmember have easy tranny installation access, to there's no problem.
You don't need to support the rear of the engine as long as you remove your distributor cap. The engine will hang on the engine mounts with no problem.
Lars
I'm sorry Lars, my bad. 79 auto, removable crossmember.
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
With the removable crossmember it's not a bad job stabbing the tranny in, as long as you can get the car up high enough off the ground and you don't mind laying underneath it doing grunt work... I'm too old to lay on a creeper under a car stabbing tranny's, so I won't do it that way any more. I don't do anything that would risk spilling my Martini, so I drop it all down from the top...
Question on Tranny install
