The engine is finally out. My plan worked really well. I disconnected everything, then put the engine on the support bar and put the transmission jack under the transmission. Then I supported the front subframe with the hydraulic table. I found a hint to just undo the pinch bolts on leave the struts in the car for now and that made pulling the front subframe easier. Just lowered the hydraulic table and wheeled the front suspension away. Took a little bit to figure out to store it and eventually settled on an old tire. Luckily its not too hard to move around.
I then supported the engine with the hydraulic table and alternated slowly dropping the transmission jack and the hyrdraulic table. I had missed one coolant hose that I think was for the cabin heater and the oxygen sensors on the headers. I thought I had already pulled them as part of the rest of the engine electrical harness. I also had to finesse some of the heat shields, but very smooth otherwise. It did of course make a giant mess since there is always more coolant hiding somewhere.
It was pretty stable even without the transmission jack so that probably wasn’t strictly necessary, but since I’m working alone it was good backup. The engine is mostly stable on the car, but I think that is only because it is using the headers as a kick stand, not sure it would stay upright if I removed those.
This did confirm an issue I was worried about. With the engine out the car and the battery in the back it tilted itself backwards against the rear wall of the garage. Thankfully I had some padding there already so it wasn’t a big deal, but wasn’t terribly stable. So I put a floor jack under the rear diff and a jack stand under the rear suspension to try to keep things stable for now. Unfortunately neither are quite tall enough to really get it back to where it was, but should be ok for now.
I then wanted to get the engine and transmission split to make it easier to store and move around. Lesson learned here is that I should have pulled the bolts I could easily get to from underneath when I still had it in the car. I also learned that you really need to pull the starter first or the flex plate gets trapped when you are trying to separate them. I snapped a couple of bolts off in the block. One of the small ones because the ratchet managed to reverse itself and I wasn’t paying attention. The other was one of the big ones and it was just seized in the block and I ended up just snapping the bolt.
So lots of cleanup left and I have to figure out the best way to dispose of them now. I had posted on FB Marketplace, but no bites. I’m hoping that now it is out of the car someone might be more interested. I know at the least I can sell the cats for a couple hundred bucks and I figure it has to have some scrap value since its a couple hundred pounds of aluminum.
I’ve ordered replacement parts for most of the front suspension and a rebuilt steering rack since it wasn’t significantly more expensive than just replacing the tie rods and my existing rack. I’m going to take the front subframe to get re-powder coated since it has some spot rust on it.
I’m starting to think about how I’m going to mount the front of the transmission and wondering if I can build a custom reinforcement plate with mounts for the transmission. I have both the BMW and the Lexus rear transmission mounts, so I’ll need to take a look and see what I can do there. The driveshaft will be a tricky one to figure out, but I know there is a custom driveshaft shop that can probably solve it relatively easily.
I also have the parts to do a service on the Lexus transmission, but I need it suspended so I can get to the pan first. There are some bearings in the oil pump that need replacing before that.
Lots to do, but very happy to hit this major milestone!
