Need help/advice on pulling engine&trans 1964 Pontiac

Not to be a prick, maybe you have some sort of physical reason that removing the tranny with the car jacked up may be prohibitive. If not, IMHO it may be easier to just remove the trans. Sure the bolts and lining things back up suck, but so does hoisting the engine/trans out of the engine compartment, getting the new trans attached to the engine, and putting that back in the car along with re-attaching the exhaust and PS and A/C and radiator, hood, etc.

There's just a lot more things to go wrong.

I've done both, and R&R and bolting the tranny back up and getting the torque converter right gets easier with practice. Pulling engines with or without trans I always need to get someone to help, and even then I still bash something, and if a transmission squashes me at least I have half a chance to move it by myself!

just my 2 cents, take it for what ya paid for it

 

If the Turbo 400 is a straight up swap, leave the motor in. If you have to cut the drive shaft and make a trans cross member, pull them both. It's easier to hook up the trans with the motor hanging out in the open.

If the slimjim is like an olds. There are about 60 bolts that bolt the ring gear around the torque converter, take out the four that connect the flex plate to the converter.

 

Sorry bro, I thought I was signed in here. Nico, must have been here last night......I agree with him....AHHHH.....me.

 

i had the trans in my 63 cadillac in and out 3 times. it's not that bad, and all i had was jack stands and one of those awful screw-jack transmission jacks.

the only other thing you really need is a loooooong 3/8 extension and a swivel socket....

 

Did you have to change the flywheel? Not that it matters, but I got a flywheel from a 400 when I bought a BOP starter from a guy.

 

Thanks for this thread! I've got a '63 Catalina and need to pull the engine & tranny. Engine runs, but I want to clean it up real good and the front frame and crossmember too. Car is solid and is my first restore. The info found here on the HAMB is priceless!

 

I know this is elementary, but when you start angling the engine/transmission to lift it out of the car, if there is still fluid in the trans, it's going to spill out of the tailshaft opening.

Otherwise, it's sort of six of one, half dozen of the other. You could put the car on stands or ramps and get the trans out by itself. The advantage here is that if you are flying solo, you don't need to take the hood off and that mother is heavy. A transmission jack would be your only specialized tool besides the long woble/u-joint extensions. Everything else ebing equal, I'd probably do it this way myself.

If there is a good reason for pulling the engine too, like you want to clean things up under the hood, draining ALL of your fluids before you start will cut way back on the mess. This by itself is a big thing because while it might make more of a man (or woman) out of you by laying around in a combo of engine oil, ATF and antifreeze, I don't recommend it.

The loop at the front of the block is plenty strong for pulling the engine. I usually bolt the other end of the chain to the rear driver's side intake manifold bolt. Plenty strong and convenient too.

Cover the windshield with heavy moving blankets in case the engine/trans decide to take a swing at it. In fact, put those blankets down before you pull the hood too. Those Pontiac hoods are deceptively heavy and can get away from you if you're not careful.

You don't NEED to pull the whole front end off, and I would not do that myself as it opens a whole other can of worms. The radiator, condenser and hood will allow you to pull the mill easily. Pluck the fan, pulleys and belts off the engine and there ought to be plenty of room to navigate.

Either way, you may need to "clearance" the tunnel for the TH400. It's fatter in some spots than the older transmission. This detail may make it more reasonable to pull the trans by itself. I had to make "adjustments" to the floor of my '61 Bonneville to get the TH350 in. It wasn't major, but it still needed a little convincing to go in.

Good luck.

 

On practically every car I've ever worked on, I always just pull the engine and trans out together as a unit. It never seemed worth the hassle to try to separate them in the car. The one time where I put them in separately was a bitch and I vowed to never try that again.

At the factory, they always put them in as a unit because that was the easy way to do it.

If you have a tall enough crane, sometimes you can leave the front sheet metal all together. I pulled the engine/tranny combo out of a '69 Camaro three times and you had to lift the engine way up in the sky to get over the front sheet metal and then come down with the trans at a steep angle at first, and then change the angle until it slid back into place.

Make sure you're on level smooth ground before you get started. It sucks to wind up with a big crack in the concrete that the cherry picker's front wheel keeps dropping into, or have the cherry picker start to roll sideways if you're on crooked pavement.

 

Concur with shpotty; everything I've read (my '64 Cat still has it's original 389/RHM) says you need to 'clearance' the trans tunnel when subbing a THM in place of a RHM.

 

El Caballo, if you don't mind could you take some pictures? Especially of how you bolted the chain or whatever to the engine to remove it, please? I want to pull my engine/tranny combo and may look into getting a different tranny based on what I've heard about the SlimJim's.

I found some spray can's of Pontiac engine blue on Eastwood companie's website and want to paint the engine while it is out of the vehicle.

I really appreciate all the good info here!!!