Thank the gods for weekends! The goal for the day was to get the engine and gearbox out of the car and with my relatively early start I should be able to accomplish this task.. I had not called on any friends for help as I figured that with my engine hoist and a little creative thinking I should be able to get the engine out by myself. It is so much lighter and smaller than the cast-iron lumps in OTHER cars after all. If things got sticky, my wife Chela was in the garden and would be able to lend a hand.
Here's the way the engine compartment car looked before I got started.
With the car up on jackstands I creeped (Christmas gift from my lovely wife) under the car and began unbolting the the clutch linkage and transmission. The latter is a massive piece that is pretty impressive for such a small car. Back up top, I made sure all the hoses, accerator cables and wires were disconnected. After unbolting the engine mounts I connected my engine hoist and started lifting. I learned quickly that the forward progress of the engine was limited by that massive sway bar so I quickly removed the front swaybar mounts and let it drop to the floor. That gave me a little more forward movement but the transmission was now hitting the steering track rod. I removed the flywheel cover/shroud which forms the bottom of the transmission. This gave me a little more movement but the transmission was still hitting the trackrod. One solution would have been to remove that track rod and pivot it out of the way, while another was to simply remove the gearbox from the engine and lower it on to the floor using my floor jack. This was the option I chose, mostly because I did not have a whole lot of room around the car and with the gearbox still attached the whole assembly was much heavier and longer than I felt comfortable manipulating on my own. With another pair of hands it would have been a piece of cake. As it was, I got the gearbox out of the way and could then focus on the engine.
With the gearbox now off the back of the engine, the powerplant lifted cleanly and easily out of the engine compartment. There's nothing like those precious few seconds that the engine is suspended over the nose or fender of the car as you slowly pull the hoist back. Once it clears you're home free, but some very ugly visions go through your head while you're in the danger zone there. It's always easier removing an engine from a car needing bodywork and paint than it is reinstalling an engine in a freshly repainted car of course, so at some point in the future I'll have to deal with that scary scene again.
I moved the hoist clear of the car and set the engine down nice and easy on the little dolly I made several years ago. This is the second engine to call the dolly home as my CSs motor sat on it for over a year during that restoration. I'm waiting for my engine mount adapter from AutoComponenti so that I can mount the Alfa engine to my rolling engine stand. This will make the engine easier to disassemble and work on, and will give me a little more room in my shrinking garage.
Here's what the engine looked like sitting on the dolly after removal. You can see Godiva's wagging tail in the background. She was most excited to see the engine safely out of the car.
Both the engine and transmission were FILTHY. I was eager to get the really dirty parts off and in to my trusty solvent tank.