I'm dropping in my motor right now. I can't get the input shaft of the tranny to slide into the pilot bearing. I have the motor mounts off the engine to allow more room for moving the motor around. I have the clutch attached to the engine and the downpipe also. How far should I jack up the tranny? Should I take the clutch off the motor and put it in the tranny and use the peek hole to bolt it up to the flywheel? Do I need to press the clutch in or something? I can't figure out what I'm missing.

 

did you use a clutch alignment tool when you installed the clutch onto the flywheel....it should go in fairly easy if every thing is aligned...I assume you have the car on some jack stand...if so jack the trans up a little bit and have a buddy crawl underneath to see if its aligned with the whole then just use some force to push and shack the engine toward the tran, so that it can slide in....but the most important is making sure that you have aligned the clutch right.

I think you should install the mounts before trying to align the motor with the trans since it would be a pain to install it afterwards.....the harder part is aligning the mounts to the hole.

 

I did use a clutch alignment tool.

After a few hours of fighting it, I figured it out. My clutch master cylinder took a major shiet. So the release bearing was sucked all the way to the back of the bellhousing, and it wasn't going in right because the pressure plate would hit the release bearing fork. I have the motor in now and the clutch to pressure plate bolts in, and I need to wait for a new slave cylinder to show up.

Man I wish I had read your advise before I put everything together though, it is seriously going to be a PITA to line up the motor mount studs into the subframe. Tightening up the motor mount bolts looks like a pain also.

 

glad to hear that everything is working out for you....and a pry bar is going to be your best friend to line up the motor mount stud to the subframe...good luck

 

I struggle to get the drivers side motor mount stud in the subframe for half the day, and I just gave up. The passenger side goes in no problem since the hole is bigger, but the drivers side has no wiggle room and I just can't get it in.

The motor mount hits the seat in the subframe for it, and that flexes the motor mount and throws off the alignment. Anyone have an easy solution?

 

try this.........

thread in the nut a few turn to the stud that you have already gotten in...then jack the engine up a little bit so that you can have room to wiggle and pry the other stud in and drop the engine back down...do this over and over and it should slide in..