Engine is in and bolted up. Headers and Y-pipe in place. A few tidbits that hopefully helps someone else do this much faster than I am:
1. I'm too old for this. I don't know if I would call them "muscles" any more, but something sure is sore all over. Sure am thankful for the use of my friend's steel man cave and four post lift for the past few weeks. Nice not to have to slide around on my back and fight floor jacks and jack stands.
2. Even if you take the nose off the truck like I did, you're not going to get the engine in with the headers attached. I was somewhat skeptical but just had to try anyway. Besides, the engine just looked cool hanging from the hoist with them attached. Also tried removing the passenger side header and sneaking it in there with the driver side still attached; wrong.
3. I spent most of the morning fighting the engine leveler until I finally realized that it wasn't all that helpful because it would hang up on the cowl before I could get the engine as far back as it needed to be. Took it off and used a single chain and it went right in.
4. I then spent the better part of the afternoon fighting the bell housing bolts. I had all of the nuts and bolts separated into groups, so I expected the bolts to screw in by hand once the dowel pins were in; you know, like the good old days. Wrong again. I got the bottom corner ones installed with no trouble, but two of the top ones would not even start while one started but got progressively tighter like a pipe thread. Finally, after several minutes of whining and begging prayer, for some odd reason I picked up another bolt in the same group and it zipped right in there. I took it out and compared it with the ones I had trouble with and could not tell a difference in the sizes with my no longer calibrated eyeballs. However, the ones that fit were a darker color than the silver looking ones I was using, and whadayaknow, there were four of them. Same length, head size, and "apparent" threads. As much as I'd like to blame it on the different color of the bolts, reality says they have different threads. And since being stupid wears me out quicker than a one mile sprint, I just put the dark ones in and went home before something really weird happened.
5. Yesterday I got the headers, Y-pipe, and cross pipe hooked up. All are JBA parts but the fit was a little off. Headers bolted up fine with one exception. I had to remove the thick wire hanger that the shifter cable was attached to and reroute the cable because the header wanted to rest on the wire hanger. Y-pipe to right side was easy enough. But once the cross pipe was slipped into the Y, I had to do some prying and drift pin maneuvering to get the left side attached. Then the Borla muffler's inlet was exactly the same diameter as the Y-pipe outlet, so I reckon I'll have to pick up a sleeve and have it welded by someone other than me since I tend to either burn holes in stuff or set other stuff on fire.
6. The oil dip stick tube was fun. Mine is 4WD so the engine mount on that side has an "ear" that extends down to the front differential case and is held in place by three bolts. Problem is that this mount prevents removal of the bolt that holds the dip stick tube to the block. Oh, you can loosen it, but it won't clear the mount. I wasn't about to raise the engine and remove the mount and all of that. So I cut the tube below the header tubes, mounted the header, and then made a two inch sleeve with slightly larger diameter but tight fitting tube and JB welded the seams. No holes or fires with that stuff, it works, and you can't see it from the house.
Going back in the morning for round three.
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![20200210_180926[1].jpg](https://www.ramforum.com/data/attachments/184/184218-b0a8b99fa1f2b9a5019d6aebd7efeb9d.jpg "20200210_180926[1].jpg")
