Motoring~… and, uh, transmissioning~

So despite being on the tail end of a nasty head cold, I took to removing the motor and transmission from the Solstice today.

I started by putting the car up on the lift and removing the drive shaft. This turned into more of a headache than it needed to be. The shop manual only mentioned in small print at the end of the instructions that you needed to remove the front support bolt for the differential and lower it in order to remove the drive shaft. You’d think something like that would be in big bold print at the start of the instructions. Anyways, got that sorted and removed.

After that, I removed the support brace for the transmission and put the car back down on the ground. Then I proceeded to scratch my head for a bit while I tried to figure out how the hell I was going to lift the motor, as I didn’t have any spare metric bolts or nearly enough chain around.

I ended up grabbing some heavy duty rope we’ve had for ages, wrapping it around the motor mount arms, and then securing the ends to the extended ends of the lift arms. Who knew that a shop lift works so well as an engine hoist?! After pulling the motor most of the way out, I realized the transmission was causing it to tilt way back, so I lowered it back down to about level, swung out another lift arm, and tied off the transmission to that. The whole setup lifted out, and rolled the car chassis out of the way. We used a pair of dollies, some rope, and some blocks of wood to support and secure the engine / transmission combo so it could be rollled aside for temporary storage until I can make up a proper cart for it.

Once that was all sorted, the Solstice chassis was rolled back into its spot, the area was cleaned up, and I called it a day. The only ‘casualty’ for the day was one of the motor mount rubber isolators, which ripped in half while having the rope pull against it, so I’m going to have to order up a fresh set.

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