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Originally posted by DR1665
Ryan comes through again with the pictures! Score. Just start simple and work you way into it, man. Disconnect your wire harness, labeling the connectors as you go. Pull the intake and battery out. Drain your oil and coolant. It's nice to have the radiator fans out of the way, imo. Remove your ALT/AC/PS belts and set them aside. Take the two bolts out of the pulley side of the PS pump and the one out of the header side. Then lift the PS pump up and hang it over the fender or headlight on a towel. The AC compressor is pretty much the same thing, although it's four long bolts in from the front, then you lift and sort of flip it around to hang it on the fender as well. There is no need to break any of the AC lines. Then you just remove those two brackets from the block. It's pretty straight forward when you get right down to it. Of course, you should pull the header/exhaust manifold while you're at it, even if you just unbolt the lower half/downpipe. Leave the intake manifold on there. It will make things easier on you. The clearance issues are more side to side than front to back, so having the manifolds still there gives you something hold on to, but you can always use the EGR tube on the driver's side. It's the silver pipe running next to the head over there. You'll see it. Keep an eye out for the two hangers for the engine hoist. One is on the front right corner the other on the back left. Of course, when you pull something off the engine, you'll want to be sure to keep those bolts with it. Some people like to use zip lock bags to make sure they use the same bolts to put things back on. That's all fairly simple stuff to do. The tricky stuff comes from getting the passenger side motor mount out and removing the crank pulley. Drop the big cross member that goes under the engine. Just remove the center bolt through the front motor mount and don't worry about it falling on you. There are still three other mounts holding it in place. It will hang on just one (although I wouldn't advise testing that). The engine should hang low enough that you can use the CHRYSLER HARMONIC DAMPER PULLER that you can rent for free at Autozone to remove the crank pulley. Once the pulley is off, you're pretty damn close to being done! The hardest part (simply because it's annoying as fuck your first time) is the passenger side motor mount. There are 3 bolts for it and one of them is a royal pain in the ass. Start by putting a piece of wood on your jack and raising the engine up as high as you can get it (jack under the oil pan). Break the top of the three bolts loose and slip it out. Then lower the jack all the way down and let the engine hang. Try to pull the lowest of the three bolts out now. If it's not quite low enough to go under the "frame rail," use your right hand to bounce the engine a bit while reaching under with your left hand to try and pull the bolt out from the bottom. I wouldn't be afraid to climb up on the engine and lean over the fender to reach under for the bolt if I had to. emoji

For the last of those bolts, there is a trick. If you look up near where the strut tower is, you will see a couple little hard lines that come up on the front of it. Follow them down to where they turn again to go towards the windshield. Feel along under/behind them around there and you will find a little dent/recess in the tower. (They pretty much block it, but it's for that last bolt!) Take a long screwdriver and *gently* pry upwards on those hard lines up at the top of the tower. This should pull the lines out of the way of that little recess you just found. All you have to do now is take that last bolt loose as you can get it and use the jack to slowly raise the engine until you can slip the head of that bolt into the little recess. When you get it there, you will want to try pulling the bolt towards the front of the car, bringing the mount with it. From there, it's just a matter of sort of rotating the mount and bolt until it comes right up and out. Once that motor mount is out and sitting on the floor, take a step back, crack a cold one, and feel free to light up a well-deserved smoke. Getting that mount out is, imo, the hardest part about working on these cars. Period. Once you get that out, you're home free! Get under the car and unbolt the clutch slave cylinder. It's the little do-dad with the line going to it on the front of the transmission bell housing. You can't miss it. Then look between the oil pan (which you do not have to remove) and the transmission for the flat plate Ryan showed above. It is the access panel to the flexplate. There will be one little bolt at the bottom. Remove that bolt and you will be able to see the two brackets (front and rear) that also need to come off. Once you have access to the four flexplate bolts, I suggest taking whatever can of spray paint you have lying around and giving it one quick shot between the flex plate and bellhousing. The idea being that you want to get paint on the bolt hole on the plate AND the clutch behind it for alignment purposes when you put things back together. One of the four bolts is on a different circle than the others. It's not uncommon to get to your fourth bolt putting it back together, only to find the hole doesn't line up. More annoying than anything else. These bolts are heavy duty, so expect to use a breaker bar or be smacking on the box wrench with a hammer to break them loose. This is one area where you might want some help, since the flex plate can spin on you. It's more common when putting the engine back in, but either way, you can remove the starter and wedge a pry bar in there against the teeth on the flex plate to keep it from spinning. Once you've got those four bolts out, hang the engine on the hoist and put some tension on it. You're down to something like five bolts holding the transmission to the block and it's time to pull that sucka out. While you ARE trying to pull the engine UP and OVER, keep in mind that you can lower it down to where you can rotate it if it works better for you. I don't have any pictures to add to this thread, but tegster definitely posted some related images up. If you're tackling this during the week, keep in mind that there are usually about ten of us in the chat during the middle of the day. Even so, try tearing into things when you get a chance. If you get some questions, jot them down on paper and post 'em up. We'll be sure to get you answers. That's what this site is all about, after all...