But first, we still needed to free the front springs. After over an hour of unsuccessful attempts last time, Marc decided the only way we were gonna get the spring compressor into the front springs would be to get the struts out of the way.
And those were on pretty tight, so we had to bust out the torch:
With that, the nuts broke easily, and we finally got enough vertical space to put the compressor rod on. Even so, we could only grab a couple coils, so it wasn't enough to compress the springs. Since we already had the lower control arm jacked up for safety, Marc said it screw it and started lowering the control arm. It was risky but we were standing as far out of the way as possible. Fortunately, the springs unloaded and fell out.
We recovered all the bits for the Maximum Motorsports camber plates setup. CG'll be able to thrown that on CL for a small sum.
Then we got down to the big ticket item. Ben brought the company engine hoist over, which was a good money saver for the project. We fumbled around looking for the mounts on the engine block for the hoist. This was pure winging it, and fortunately, it worked out -- the 5.0 has threaded holes on the front and back of the block. On the front you have to unmount the power steering pump, and on the rear, I think it was just free holes. Even so, they were so close to the firewall it took me like 10 minutes to get one side off, my elbow slightly hyperextended the whole time. So we ended up with 2 chains on the front and one in the back.
Raise that sucker up:
Minor wrinkle was a pair of grounding wires on another rear bolt, even less accessible. After confirming the engine and tranny were in fact clear of all other wires, I unbolted it and we were ready to take it out.
We tilted the nose up to get the tranny out of its tunnel.
The 8-ton hoist didn't have as much vertical range as we needed, so we had to lower the front jackstands under the car to dip the radiator support so we could get the oil pan over it.
Not pictured is the engine and tranny sitting on two race tires (we haven't figured out how to put the engine on the generic engine stand). It leaned to the side about 20 degrees and puked out about a quart of coolant. What a mess.
And finally, the empty engine bay:
Note to self: where are the endlink bolts for the steering rack?
