Chapter 1
11/22/03 - 8:00PM
5 hours and the engine is out!

Tonight we started the engine. The evening began as Eric took the hammer to the driverside fender of the '44. After that, we began to take everything that connected the engine to the car (makes sense). This wasn't necessarily rocket science, although my desire to procede methodically clashed with Eric's desire for speed. It didn't really matter soon though, as a long week made me get tired very quickly, and I began to adapt his desire for speed (not because I wanted to finish, but because I was becoming delierious).

So at about 2300 hrs we had most everything on the top of the engine disengaged. We then moved to the bottom of the engine, removing the wide-pipe (by breaking at a welded spot, it's trash) and removing the suspension. This is because as you may know, the engine comes out the bottom.

At this time, Eric made sure that nothing else was connected to the engine. We had the suspension removed and everything up top removed. Now was time to pull the torque tube out and lower the engine down. It's about 1AM at this time, but surprisingly we're not very tired. I think it has something to do with the dozen or so Cherry Cokes we drank between us, plus all the M&Ms.

Time to come out! We carefully pulled the torque tube bolts out, as I single-handed held the engine up in place -- using the engine hoist of course. We had the car jacked up as far as we can, and the engine hoist around the engine. We losened the bolts, and down she came!

It's out. So now what? Well, we cleaned everything up, lowered the car back down onto the jack stands, and called it a night. At this time, it was 2AM, so we were at it for 5 hours straight and got the engine out. By the time we straightned everything up, it was 3AM. We got inside around 3:30 and called it a night.

Chapter 2--->