LS1 question
 

I just bought a 98' T/A that I am going to be parting out. I have never owned or worked on a 4th gen so I wanted to get feed back from those of you who have worked on them before. I need to know how to pull the motor out and the safest way to do it since I'll be doing it in my drive way. from what i was told from a friend of mine you have to drop the front K-member inorder to get the motor out. How do I go about doing this? What should I be pulling off first and in what order do I do it?

can the motor be pulled from up top?

easiest seems to be drop the cradle. I used an engine hoist to pick up the front of the car. did it by myself in the garage.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../IMG_4009a.jpg

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1...g?t=1304039106

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1...g?t=1304039121


bottom is the way to go.

agreed. the factory put the motor in from the bottom so its much easier to pull it that way. iirc the k member has only like 6 bolts attaching it to the body?

I am assuming I have to disconnect the steering column and the rack before dropping the k member.

yeah just undo the rack at the bottom of the column. pull the boot back and youll see whats going on. the rack mounts to the k member so once you undo that and the lines its no big deal

there are some other sites that have real informative info, not saying there isnt any here. but ls1tech has a nice sticky on it. i have a book on this ( how to build high performance chevy lsi/ ls6 v8's ) it has some good stuff im sure there are others out there too.

Ok thanks. I looked under the car and I saw 4 bolts. Maybe I missed the other 2 somewhere. I see the struts have to be unbolted too. It seeems like it's not too bad. Just a lot of of non sense to take out and to go thru to drop it out.

I pull them from the top....

6 bolts on the k, 3 per side. 1 is in front of the lower a arm, one you get through it, and one is behind it. 4 nuts on top of the shock towers, 4 bolts as well (torx head on driver side, undo master cylinder if you need access, another 2 nuts). One 11mm bolt on steering column, no need to remove rack. Support the k with a jack or 2 stands and then a stand for each lower a arm. Pull all your wiring, pull the ds, pull the torque arm, and disconnect brake lines for the front from the abs block. Rad hoses and exhaust should pretty much cover it. Lift car up and smile. Having a strut tower brace is nice because you can basically use it to support the k assembly and drive the motor and trans around. A dolly for the trans helps too and you can even put a dolly under either front tire to get real crazy!!!

considering he is parting it, dropping it out from underneath is easiest. unless he wants to keep it a roller I guess. but those front clips get bought up by lt1 guys looking to swap.

Thanks for your help guys. This helps out a lot.