Remove trans with engine, or before remove engine?

[Wicked96SS]

The scenario is this:

TKO600 Trans, 460

Chances are, if I remove the trans FIRST I will have to do it myself with the car jacked up, trying to use a floor jack to balance it and bring it down slowly.

Is it easy enough in these cars to pull the trans with the engine, and then, install the engine and trans together? Or would I be better off removing the trans first (leaving the bellhousing and clutch until the engine is out)? I don't have a lift, so the car will more than likely be on jack stands.

Any information or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Gordon Levy]

Pull the engine first then pull the trans. It is very hard to do as a unit in a completed car.

[Wicked96SS]

Thank you Gordon for your reply. I really appreciate the answer!

The only issue I would have (working on the ground with jack stands) would be lining the transmission back up. I was hoping that I could take out the trans, mate it to the engine and then feed the whole thing back into the car. Just makes it a little easier to bolt the engine and trans together when they are out of the car.

I am very much a noob when it comes to these cars, and to be honest, i haven't jacked it up and looked under it yet (I have to get a new floor jack, mine's too tall). I only have seen what I could see squeezing under the car.

Thanks for any help you all can give me!

[wrench87]

when i removed my 342, i removed the bolts from the bell housing to engine seperated the 2 and then removed the engine, i then removed the 4 bolts and took the bell housing off the transmission, then clmbed in the engine compartment and removed the tranny.

[Bob Cowan]

Like Gordon said, trying to remove a BB with trans attached from a competed car can be a real bear. It will save you hours of work to pull the trans by itself.

Does your car have a removable transmission mount? If so, you can probably leave the engine in place - which saves 12-14 hours of work.

Call around to rental yards and try to find a transmission jack. That will make your life a whole lot easier.

Getting the transmission back in place while lying on your back is a pain to do. But there are a couple of tricks that make it a lot easier.

[Wicked96SS]

Thank you all for the suggestions. We were able to get the engine and trans out in one hunk, and it took about 3 hours (granted that's not counting the weeks of prep I did before we yanked it). What made it easier for us at least was the fact that the MK3.1 did have a removable trans mount, AND I found out that the aluminum that covered the trans in the cockpit was only held on by one pop rivet. So, I drilled that out and had great access to help guide the trans out. The car is hardly complete by any sense of the meaning, but it is "together".

What we ended up doing was jacking up the rear of the car as high as the jack stands would allow us, then lowering the front as low as the jack stands would allow. We came in from the side, and during the process had to jack the car up to move jack stands as we coaxed it forward.

Another "trick" we found out was using a shorter load leveler. The one that I had was very long, and that would interfere with the cowl. One of the guys brought his over, that's much shorter, and we never had any issues.

Now, I'll be taking the body off to do a lot of stuff, so when the engine comes back, it should be pretty easy with the body off to get it back in. I should have taken the body off FIRST, but, I didn't. Oh well.

Thanks again!