Since none of my friends whom I expected to be in town were able to make it, I had the day to myself to work on the car, and I got a lot done!
1. Ran the motor to temperature and drained the oil, foolishly making a horrible, near-Valdez oil spill. (Thankfully no photographic evidence)
2. Disassembled the backyard "engine stand," and pulled the motor out with the cherry picker (None here, either)
3. Dumped it in the back of my pickup
4. Ran it around to the garage, pulled the bare trans case, and cleared a path in the garage for the cherry picker
5. Then, on the advice of two friends, I heated the exhaust manifold bolts to make them easier to remove. I would have had to remove them eventually, of course, but right now I needed to remove at least the driver's side so I can bolt the motor into my K.R. Wilson (style) flathead engine stand (which you can see in the last picture in this post). These stands use a fixture that mounts to the exhaust ports.
The heating process involved using the torch to heat each of the bolt heads cherry red, going around the motor until each bolt has been heated at least three times.
Bonking the bolts with a hammer between heatings probably helps, so I did that too. After doing this, nearly all of the bolts came out by hand after first loosening with a wrench. Only a few needed another heating cycle to get them out. I was easily able to remove both manifolds this way.Next I'll run a tap into the threads to clean out the accumulated rust, then bolt the motor into the stand. All of this is in preparation to remove the pan to fix it, change the pressure plate and clutch (and now, flywheel, too, as my parts friend has a complete 9" setup for me), and change the timing cover to the two-bolt style to allow me to bolt on the crab distributor.
And, to close out this post, a couple fun shots of the garage as twilight settled over my neighborhood. Yeah, I'm THAT guy in my neighborhood.
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