After two good days of work, I got a lot pulled off the Jeep. Friday started off good with the steering column and steering box pulled off the frame. Once I got the easy work done, I turned my attention to the transmission.
My original plan was to remove the crossmember mount from between the cross member and the transmission and slide it back to hook it to the hoist and pull off. Unfortunately, the mount is a little more substantial than I had originally thought. My second attempt was to make sure the block was properly propped up, then drop the crossmember and slide the transmission out of the bell housing. After attaching the chains to a good spot, I gave a slight tug and off it came. The bell housing came of next, and now I get to focus on the clutch and flywheel.
Along with all that goodness on the rear of the block, I was also finally able to release the head nuts. I decided that the air wrench-oil-air wrench-repeat method of getting the nuts off was really taking way too long. AFter 3 weeks, I had 3 bolts loose and not much in the way of progress on the others. I got a long breaker bar and went to work on the remaining 12 nuts. With a little extra oil and some very careful pushing, the remaining nuts came free, and as far as I can tell, nothing broke.
Next steps are going to be getting the clutch/flywheel off the end of the block, and then get the full oil filter emptied and removed. After that, I don’t see any other major hurdles to removing the block.
Wow, lots of progress!