Pulling the motor - tips

[opethmike]

Car is an April 81 build, ~38,000 miles, manual.

I'm going to pull the motor in the next month or two, so that I can spend the winter and the spring putting in an engine with slighly less comical horsepower.

Do the PRV pulling veterans have any pointers for this particular car? I've pulled motors before, and there's always some little 'gotcha' that ends up taking much longer than it should.

Thanks in advance.

[Josh]

remove louvers, engine cover, and rear fascia
remove wiring harness, exhaust, coolant piping, fuel lines, ac compressor (tuck off to side)
pull engine and transmission together

[powerline84]

If you take the time to pull all that stuff off ^^^pulling the motor and trans is real easy on this car.

[Henrik]

What they said ^^^ + remove drive axles

Just one thing to add: For those of you with automatic trannies (so obviously doesn't apply here... but still...):

If you pull the motor and auto transmission as one unit, be sure to remove the three bolts that attach the flexplate to the torque converter before you split the bell housing from the motor. I missed that part first time around about 10 years ago and warped the flex plate as a result. $300+ bucks.

(Come to think of it, that replacement flexplate is for sale since I did a complete engine swap.)