Hello,

New member here, and was hoping to possibly get some advice.

I have spent the past hour scouring this most excellent site, for information pertinent to the engine swap I am doing (V6 Vortec.)

I am at the point in my swap, where I need to get the bell housing bolts removed. The general consensus seems to be that the easiest way, is to drop the transmission and use extensions for the upper bell housing bolts.

My question, is two fold- one, does the exhaust need to be completely removed? I have bolts removed from the studs on the exhaust manifold, but does it need to be completely removed in order to get room for the bell housing bolts?

Second, do the heat shields that are mounted on the underside of the floor, which are right above the bell housing, need to be removed?

Thank you very much to anybody who can respond.

Scott

 

lowering the tranny is the easiest way to get those top bolts....and no the heat shields stay put.....the exhaust doesn't have to come completely off but it will make it very hard to put back in....your better off to remove it from the from of the cat to the manifolds


oh and welcome

 

Thank you very much for the reply.

Scott

 

Hello all,

Was hoping to get a little more information on doing this engine pull on my 97 Blazer (S10) This does have 4WD in case anybody wants to know.

I have gotten just about to the point where we are going to try and get the upper most bell housing bolts out- I have followed the advice provided elsewhere on this site, and am trying to drop the transmission so as to pull the engine down in order to get to those last couple bolts with a mega extension and wobble socket.

My question is the following: Since this is 4WD, we had to remove the transfer case in order for the transmission to be able to drop down. Of course the one cross-member was unbolted and removed, however, with the transfer case removed, will there be enough weight to pull the engine down enough to expose those bell housing bolts?

Thanks again to anybody who can help.

Scott

 

In some cases it is easier to jack the body up..I had luck by lifting the very front of the engine so it would tilt back some..Hope this helps

 

There should be more than enough weight to tilt the motor back enough to get these bolts out. Just remember to remove the distributor so you do not break it against the firewall.

If your truck has spent it's life in the south, then you may be able to remove the body mount bolts and jack up the body, but with northern trucks, this can be problematic.

 

Well, I thought the engine would be out today, but I definitely got stuck- after all the bell housing bolts were removed, along with everything else that needed to come off in order to pull the engine out, we tried breaking the engine and transmission loose. Absolutely nothing would work! We checked several times to make sure all bolts were removed, including the upper bell housing, and still this thing would not budge.

Is there something I missed- the 3 bolts were definitely removed from the torque converter.

I literally got under this thing, and used my feet to push the transmission spline back and forth. Nothing.

It just seems that those guide pins could not possibly be holding this thing on still, but I am at a total loss.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Scott

 

just pull the engine and tranny as one unit....

then swap tranny and reinstall as one unit

but you will probably need to pull a few other things or at least loosen things up a bit

 

So there is enough room to get the engine and tranny out together? I spent another couple hours today trying to get the bellhousing seperated from the engine, to no avail. Has anybody ever had this problem before?

Scott