Pulling Engine/Separating Tranny from T-case and Engine

Before I pulled the engine/trans/t-case I needed to remove some extra parts put on by the original owner. Fig. 1 shows the winch mount he had. As you can see he welded on some nice thick C-channel to the frame triangular pieces and the front bumper. I will run a winch eventually and will either put this channel back on or make a new version.

I cut the welds on the front channel and bumper with a cut off wheel then broke all the bolts to remove the bumper. Once the bumper was off I found out what trying to pull a fork lift that had run off a ramp onto soft ground back on the ramp will do to a bumper! My brother had done this with a large chain he hooked on the bottom lip of the bumper. See Fig. 2. I will try to straighten it with the shop press but I think I will just end up making one for it. Fig. 3 shows the rusty frame in the front.

Now that the body is off the frame I needed a way to safely move the chassis in and out of the garage. My drive slopes down so I could not just push it in and out. I had a tow bar I used on my Pathfinder so like any good hillbilly I pressed it into service. See Fig.4 for the ultimate booty attachment! :-) Later I will re-do this bar for towing the FJ. Fig.5 shows it in use.

I knew the body of the FJ was pretty light but had no idea it would float! See Fig. 6. Air Cruiser?

Since I had such good access to the engine I decided to fab up the power steering system before pulling it. I made a full write up for that. See it here Power Steering Fab work.

Once that was done I started stripping the engine so I could clean and restore the parts, then clean the block in preparation for paint.

This involved removing ALL the stuff bolted on to the engine. See the series of pics below...

Once I had all the parts removed they were cleaned, painted or powder coated then stored wrapped in paper until I start putting it back together.

See the Engine Clean-up .

I bought a 2 Ton engine hoist (See Fig. 7) and 1000 lb stand from Harbor Freight See (Fig. 8). It was money I did not have to spare on this project but I justified it by coming up with 'other' uses for the hoist. Plus I have read that it makes it easy to replace transmissions and T-case's! I also bought 4 12mm x 1.75 x 100mm bolts for the stand. (Turned out 100mm is WAY too long! Measure first before ordering bolts!)

I decided to pull the engine, tranny, t-case as one unit since I did not have to worry about the body. Plus I wanted to see how the HF hoist handled the worst case scenario of all that weight. HF did not have the engine hoist leveler in stock at the time so I had to figure out where the balance point was. I figured incorrectly! Fig. 9 shows where I made two mistakes. I had finally scored both engine hooks off E-Bay so could now more easily pull the engine. First the chain is WAY too short! Being short causes too much sideways force on the hooks. This resulted in the bending of the front hook! The second mistake was positioning the lifting 'hook' in the middle of the chain. I completely misunderstood the lever action the tranny and t-case would have on the whole assembly. Though the motor outweighs them over 2:1, the fact they are extended out means the balance point is MUCH closer to the rear of the engine. This provided several moments of', "Oh Shit!"

I know, I know! Engineering 101: The Lever, right? Bite me... First Cruiser combo I ever pulled...  Did I mention I did this all totally by myself? Yes that was also a mistake...

As the motor started coming up I did notice the tilt (See Fig. 10. ) but was all excited about pulling the engine and sort of ignored it. As the engine started to clear the rear motor mounts it suddenly jumped forward and the tail end swung down! Heart attack city I can tell you! I seriously thought the hoist had failed and jumped sideways to 'save' myself. Remember I have a one car garage so I could not jump far. :) Of course the hoist was fine and after getting my heart to slow down I realized the position of the hoist hook was wrong. At this point I was committed so I raised the hoist up to it's highest limit, attached a ratchet strap to the tail of the t-case to help level it and pulled it the rest of the way out. The hoist did this with very little flex. I immediately sat it on the floor so I could reposition the chain. See Fig. 12. Now it sat level.

I gently sat the entire combo on the floor (with most of the weight still on the hoist so as not to bend the oil pan) and proceeded to figure out how to pull the tranny and t-case from the engine. See Fig. 13. I searched IH8MUD for tips on this (not carefully enough!), read the FSM through a couple of times then figured it was now or never!

1. I started by removing the clutch arm from the bell housing then removing the two 19mm bolts that are up hidden up inside the bell housing. See Fig. 14.
2. Next remove the other two 19mm bolts on the upper trans. See Fig. 15.
3. Support the transmission/t-case while sliding the assembly backwards. Be SURE to support it! You don't want to damage the pilot bearing if you are going to use it again (not recommended, they are cheap). So now you have the tranny/t-case sitting on the floor.
4. If you plan on separating the t-case from the tranny then remove the six bolts holding the Transmission Output Shaft Cover on AND the PTO cover six bolts. See Fig. 16-18. This will expose the big nut on the end of the transmission output shaft. See Fig. 16-17.
5. Now refer to Fig. 18-19 and using a brass or other soft metal part (like a large brass punch) lock the gears in the t-case so you can remove the large nut on the end of the shaft. I used a large adjustable wrench. Place the nut, locking tab washer, and spacer in a bag and label it!

1. Remove the 5 bolts holding the t-case to the tranny. Start with the two SHORT bolts inside the PTO cover. See Fig. 20. Then remove the three long bolts as shown in Fig. 21. You are now ready to separate the t-case form the tranny.
2. If you are lucky enough to own the SST for separating the t-case form the tranny then attach it now and start cranking, but if you are like the rest of us poor slobs then you have to get creative. I'm going to start by saying I got impatient and came up with a unique way to get'er done! Next I'm going to tell you to ignore my method as it has some, uh, consequences!
3. So I had no puller, and as stated got impatient. Had I taken the time to search IH8MUD, I would have run across an easy to build puller but instead I tried the brute force method of just grabbing and yanking. Of course that did not work, it just slide about 1/2" and stopped.
4. Enter the wooden shims. I had read where someone ripped a 2 x 4 at an angle and used that as a wedge to separate the two so... I searched around the basement and found a package of wooden shims used to level things... and without thinking through what I was about to do I inserted the shims and started driving them in... See Fig. 22-23. (I know all you experienced folks are laughing your asses off about right now...)
5. Ok long story short... About the time I was feeling real proud of my 'solution' I heard the unmistakable sound of needle bearings falling inside the TRANSMISSION? WTF? I stopped pounding and then realized that as I was driving the cases apart I was also pulling the transmission main shaft and it's support bearing out of the rear.... Oh man.... OK so now you know. Guess I now get to learn how to rebuild a 3 sp tranny right?
6. I completed pulling the cases apart and set them aside for now. Lets get that bell housing off.

1. Unclip the release bearing hub (throw out bearing) clips (See Fig. 24.) from the clutch arm. Remove the release hub.
2. Remove the bolt shown in Fig. 24. The clutch arm can now be removed.
3. Insert a clutch alignment tool to support the clutch.
4. If reusing the clutch/pressure plate/flywheel then use something to mark the pressure plate cover to flywheel orientation so it can be installed in the same position.
5. Rotate the flywheel/pressure plate cover to access the three pairs of bolts holding the pressure plate cover to the flywheel. Loosen the bolts one turn at a time so as not to warp the cover! Once the bolts are out remove the pressure plate cover and clutch disk.
6. Next get your impact wrench and a 6 point 15mm socket. DO NOT USE A 12 POINT!!! Flatten the locking lock washers tabs and remove the six bolts holding the flywheel to the crank. Remove the flywheel and set aside.
7. Optionally remove the rear motor mounts from the bell housing. Now remove the two bolts inside the bell housing holding the bell housing to the engine. Remove the two top bell housing bolts shown in Fig 25 and remove the bell housing from the engine. Careful! It's heavy!
8. Here is what you will have. See Fig. 26. Time to get the engine on the stand.

1. Remove the head from the engine stand and get your bolts,washers and spacers ready.
2. The idea behind a stable mounting of the engine to the stand is to get the head arms spaced as far apart as possible left to right and top to bottom. On a F engine that means the engine bolt holes for the bell housing. It will take some trial and error to figure out how your stand will work but look at the pics to see how the Harbor Freight stand works.
3. Remember I said I bought some bolts for the engine to stand? These turned out to be WAY too long so I had to cut some spacers from some tubing and use the old washer trick. Remember when mounting your engine to the stand, DO NOT put any washers or spacers in front of the stands arm bolt tubes! Put them behind the tubes. You want the stress to be on the arms, not the bolts! See Fig. 27-28.

Next Up: Cleaning Engine/Painting Engine

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