The 2000 GT is now just a body, waiting for some frame preparation — oh, and the rear suspension is in-tact.

The engine removal, once I had worked out most of the kinks, was pretty straight forward. I’m very glad I’m doing this, as I’ve uncovered some rather serious rust that will have to be dealt with — minor in the back, major by the front k-member attachment point. It’s not life-threatening — but if this car had gone through another winter or two, probably would have given me some real grief, so it’s a good thing I’m doing this now.

The engine removal was actually pretty easy once I worked out the frame connection point I would use.
I took quite a few pictures, and you can follow this link to the album of pictures.

There were a few kinks to work out — for starters, I needed a frame connection point near the very front of the car. I initially wanted to connect the engine hoist to the strut mounting plates on the top — which would have put the legs of the engine hoist squarely under the k-member (which, if you walk through how this all works, means it won’t work).

To remedy this, I used a 36″ wide crow-bar, and attached it with the engine balance to two chains near the very front of the car, which allowed me to be able to raise and lower the car from the very very front.

The next problem was that the legs of the engine hoist were higher off the ground than the bottom of the k-member while it was sitting on the floor dollies — so, when I went to lower the body and motor down onto the floor dollies, the engine hoist legs hit the radiator support (no, I wasn’t happy at this point).

I spaced the floor dollies with some 2″ tall weights, which allowed me to set the engine+k-member+transmission down. The rear of the transmission was supported with a jack-sand on its side, so I could slip the jack under the transmission later without having to figure out how to raise the transmission up for the job.

At this point, I removed the remaining k-member bolts (half had been removed — one at each of the 4 connection points under the car). It’s imperative that you remove the bolts completely, as they will bind while you’re raising the body, which is counter to what you would think would happen — the body of the car does not simply “slip off” the k-member bolts.

It also bears mentioning here that the back of the car is resting on a couple of steel ramps, which means that the angle of attack for raising and lowering the car is greatly reduced — especially when raising.

I also removed the passenger strut, which meant that the entire wheel opening was available for engine removal.

Once I had the body off of the engine, I put the jack under each side of the engine and removed the spacers (the weights I used — see above). I made sure that the floor dollies were squarely under the k-member so that they would roll easily, and I oriented each of the wheels so that it would roll sideways. Then I slide the jack under the transmission and removed the jack-stand (on its side) that had been holding it up.

Finally, gently, I pushed the engine out of the passenger wheel well — it came out easily this way. Once clear of the car, I found that I could simply push on either side of the cylinder heads from behind and guide it around like any piece of furniture on wheels — it really was easy to move once supported this way (two floor dollies and a floor jack).

All in all, I can’t help but recommend that this be the way to pull your engine — especially if you’re doing the job alone, as gravity is much more on your side for this operation.

Now that the engine is out of the car, I can fully start the build. All of the parts I’ll need are in, from what I can tell, so the fun truly begins now!

-=Fericye=-