Welcome back to Hank’s Cars and Coffee. In Episode 3, we bought an engine stand and hoist from Harbor Freight and took an embarrassingly long amount of time to build them. Also, the lift had no hydraulic fluid in it so we had to make a quick run to the parts store to get some.
Since I’ve never pulled an engine before, I called in some support and had my Fiancé, Miranda, stop by and tell a few stories about the cars I’ve owned since we started dating a few years ago and what she thought about them.
She happily took some time to sit by, chit chat, and let everyone know how she really felt about some of my bad decision making with past project cars. Fortunately though, she has always been supportive in my endeavor of learning new things and has been a continued encouragement throughout our relationship. Along with the car chat, she showed off her newest and favorite hoodie, the Hank’s Cars & Coffee hoodie along with her coffee that sported a circle Hank’s Cars & Coffee sticker! All of which can be found on THIS WEBSITE! A woman after my own heart truly.
Pulling The Engine
Once Miranda had finished telling her stories and I had finished unbolting the transmission, it was time to start yanking on the engine to try and get it out. Now, during this part, I expected there to be 1 or 2 things to still be connected that I had forgotten about, but there were 6. After a few times of trial and error and removing the headers, we finally got the engine free.
This part of the process was one that I had worried about up until this point as I had never pulled an engine before, nor had I really done anything close to that. Needless to say, I was pretty hyped when I finally got it out and rolled away on the hoist, a proud moment truly. In retrospect, a lot of the things I’ve learned about working on cars has a lot to do with proper prep, tooling, and patience, so going into it with that mindset I think has helped a lot in the “figure it out,” stages.
At the end of the video, you’ll see me zoom in on the passenger side of the engine cradle where the I-Beam mount is. There, you can see some kind of stress crack or shock cracking in the steel. Fortunately, we’ll already be getting a welder out here to fabricate some motor mounts, so we will go ahead and repair that as well before mounting up the OM606.
This sets us up pretty well for our timeline and will lead us into Episode 4, where we will be tearing into the 302 and going over the main To-Do list of what is to come in this swap.
If you’ve got questions about this swap, especially if you’re thinking of doing something similar, drop a comment or DM me at @hankejohnson or @hankscarsandcoffee on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. I’m trying to share every step in detail so that others can follow along—or learn from my mistakes.