what would you do - hypothetically of course lol (engine swap)

[markeb01]

Originally Posted by neverwinter

hey all,

I have been reading that doing the crossmember swap is much easier to do with the engine out. If thats the case it seems silly to take the tired 283 out and drop it back in.

For what it’s worth, it’s not all that hard to swap out the complete crossmember with the engine in place. It just needs to be supported during the operation. I’ve read where others have used a hoist to lift the engine. I simply parked the engine on top of the frame rails by bolting lengths of scrap frame rail to the old 55 Chevy engine mount holes on the front of the block. The other end rested on top of the frame on each side. This rigidly held the engine in place while the suspension was swapped out. The only issues I ran into were dealing with the 18 degree (and below) temperatures at the time.

I’ll admit it would have been marginally easier with the engine out, but I only wanted to deal with one project at a time, and this approach eliminated a lot of extra work and left me with a functioning vehicle once the wheels went back on.