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When you lower the rear cradle you must not be able to lower it a lot because the rear of the engine will be going lower but I imagine it can only be lowered so far before you run into problems? Would love to hear how this is done as I am changing my rear and trans soon and have been wondering. I know old school you had to worry about breaking the distributor if you lowered the trans very far and would brace it while trans is out.
When I did mine I removed the shifter from the torque tube, I removed the air tube from the throttle body and removed the intake manifold and moved it forward towards the front of the car a couple of inches to prevent it from hitting the firewall.
Then you can go ahead and drop the cradle and them lower the drive line enough so that the diff will slide away from the trans and clear the rear well.
The car in the picture is a C5 and it's plain to see that the cradle has not been lowered or removed. You can see the brake rotors, shocks and upper control arms are in their normal positions. That being the case, the only way to get the diff out is to have removed the rear tub before hand. There is no other way to get the diff or trans out without lowering the driveline and cradle. It's unlikely that most would want to remove the rear tub to do this job, however, it is convenient for those who race their cars and need quick access to the rear drive components on a routine basis.
I know that guy...FRC Tom....he used to live by me and was a great guy and great tuner always super helpful....crawled in the bottle after his daughter killed herself...haven't seen or heard from him for years. I knew by the thread title what was coming before I clicked.
Here ya go! My clutch quick change from back in the day! After beating my head/face off those dangling half shafts for a better part of the day, I just drop it all out now for working "elbow room".
Cheers,
Goose
The cradle certainly is removed in that first picture. The lower control arms are also removed since you can see that the shocks are no longer connected to them and you can't see them hanging there anymore. I'd say he separated the lower ball joints and removed the lower shock bolts and then dropped the cradle leaving the upper arms and spindles hanging in place.
Hello All, juts to clarify..Yes the cradle has been removed from my car and is laying on the garage floor on the right side of the photo.I DO NOT recommend this process for the following reasons as “I have been there and done that”!You have to disconnect the lower “A” arms and tie rods from the knuckle, to include disconnecting the shock from the lower “A” arm.Her is the issue!The weight and mass from the brake rotors/calipers and half shafts is now being supported by the upper control “A” arms/ frame attach points and this mass is stressing the upper “A” attach point bushings so much, that I had to put jack stands under the knuckles (which you can see in my photo) to support this mass and remove the stresses from the upper control “A” arm bushings.CV Half Shafts> As the half shafts are now hanging from the outer CV Joints, the CV Joint boot is now stretched to the MAX supporting the shaft weight which is not really good for this CV boot.In essence, you can do the job many different ways, but you must also consider what I call “maintenance-induced-maintenance” where you approach may cause risk of damaging components during the maintenance task.In this link, you can see my “preferred method” that reduces the risk of “maintenance-induced-maintenance” which I recommend.https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/c5-tech/4129278-pics-quick-jack-clutch-replacement.html
