5 tips for your next engine pull

There are few bigger tasks than removing the powerplant or drivetrain from your project car. After all, you are making the conscious choice to take what might be a running and driving car and, within an afternoon, to significantly increase the odds that it will never do either of those things again. Not every engine pull or swap happens in a tidy or efficient timeframe, but with a small amount of preparation, the job can be quicker, safer, simpler, and, with any luck, more fun. Here are a handful of tips to consider next time you open the hood to evict the mechanical resident underneath it.

Split the Job

Do all the prep work one evening, and do the actual pull the next. A fresh mind and some time to think often prevent small errors that may create larger and annoying problems down the road. Time is a luxury, but project cars don’t typically need to be in running condition by Monday morning. While it can be tough to slow down in the middle of an exciting task, an appropriate pause will save time in the end. Using a service manual or self-written checklist to keep track of the project’s phases can also make a “you have one shot at this” project more efficient. When we write things down, it forces us to think through the job and perhaps adjust the order of operations, before we get elbow-deep and find that we have to backtrack to go forward.

Call for Help

Many hands make work lighter, or at least more entertaining. On my latest engine drop-in, I brought over a whole crew of friends, and we accomplished the task at nearly pit-crew speed, since there were enough bodies to split up duties and responsibilities. More importantly, extra sets of eyes can be a great luxury considering engines are often large enough that, as you carefully lower one into place, you cannot see both or all sides to ensure everything is clear. Have most of us pulled off an engine pull or drop alone? Sure, but having help limits mistakes or broken bits, because a crew provides a sounding board for any issues that may arise.

Prepare and Make Space

Engines are big. Most of our garages are smaller than we’d like them to be. Having enough space to move around both before and after getting the engine out is key to continuing positive forward progress. Lots of parts will need to leave the engine compartment, and not all of them will be so neatly attached to the engine. Designating a spot in which to pile things—or, better yet, to organize them—helps keep delicate parts from getting damaged, lost, or somehow transforming into the wrong part. It happens, I swear.

Manage the Fluids

One of the more annoying parts of doing an engine pull is dealing with the coolant, oil, and fuel that are so critical to making the engine work. Disconnecting, draining, and disposing of these fluids can be inconvenient at best and downright annoying most of the time. A good drain pan helps significantly in keeping the floor from becoming a slippery mix of oil and kitty litter. Not everything drained will need to be disposed of every time. When I pulled the original L98 engine from my 1985 Corvette last fall, the coolant was only a year old, so I simply drained it into a clean pan and transferred it to jugs to be reused or carried as back-up while on a trip.

Take Photos and Make Labels

Memory is fallible, especially when life happens and takes what was meant to be a weekend project and morphs it into a multi-month slog where every piece requires being moved or shuffled three times before actually being reassembled. It’s a tough reality, and certainly one we all try to avoid, but often we can’t. Labels allow us to forget things. There are enough things to remember in life, and none of us is so proficient that we can identify which bolt is which as we pluck them out of a greasy tin can, six months after we first put them into that can.

There are tons of tips specific to certain cars or chassis, so consider these general ideas, but if you know something that would rescue a wrencher with a particular car, we’d love to hear it. The service manual might describe a way to do the job, but even my favorite service manual is 60 years old, and plenty of new tools and techniques have cropped up since then. Share them in the comments below!

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