4A-F Drivetrain Removal

Once the new engine is rebuilt, and you think that you have as many parts as you need, it is time to tear the old engine and tranny out. Although probably one of the most rewarding parts of the swap, it is best left until you absolutely don't need your car for a while. Swaps like this can take much longer than expected, so have some other form of transportation to get you to and from the parts store!

Begin by disconnecting and removing the battery. No sense in shorting anything out, or blowing yourself up now. Check the BGB for the correct engine removal sequencing, but generally speaking, remove as much stuff as you can. Disconnect all the electrical connections, shifter connections, air cleaner assembly, fuse blocks, etc. Drain all fluids into a suitable container at this point. It's no fun to have the engine half out of the car with tranny oil, engine oil, and coolant making a nice mess on your floor.

Once the fluids are drained, and everything that can be removed has been removed, you need to disconnect the power steering pump hoses from the rack. Do not remove or tamper with the brake lines or reservoir, as the systems are unrelated. If your vehicle came with air conditioning, and you want to keep it, I cannot be of any help. You will have to do some creative work with mounts and pullies to get the AW11 and AE92 systems to match up in this respect. The same applies to the power steering. You can choose, however, to keep the power steering if you don't mind ditching the supercharger, as the 2 components share the same location. The Japanese Levin has P/S and A/C, so if you use that engine, it is possible to maintain some creature comforts.

Assuming you are losing the A/C, you need to have the system evacuated by an authorized mechanic. It is not advisable to just vent the system out into the atmosphere. Ideally, your shop has a method of capturing the freon into a container. It might be a good idea to do this before the car becomes undriveable. Once the system is discharged, you can disconnect the A/C hard lines from the car. It's easiest to unbolt the A/C compressor from the engine and get it out of the way at this time, too.

You can now also get the A/C condensor out, too. This theoretically makes more room up front for your future front-mounted intercooler, but (as of 6/11/02) I have yet to do this. It does make the airflow going to the radiator much nicer, though. You might also want to remove the radiator, too, by disconnecting the upper and lower hoses, and unbolting the 2 upper brackets, and pulling it out of the way. When removing the engine, it's all too easy to damage the radiator fins.

Next, you need to crawl under the car and disconnect the upper exhaust manifold from the downpipe. You may want to just disconnect it from the cat, too, and again, get it out of the way. Everything you remove now will make life easier when the engine is trying to get taken out. There are some heater hoses that need to be disconnected from the firewall, as well as the fuel lines, throttle cable, and other miscellaneous things.

You now need to remove the front wheels and access the axles. You can either remove the large axle nut, and swing everything out of the way, or remove the bolts at the ball joint and the hub to strut bolts to remove the axle and hub/brake assembly in one piece. Either way, you will need to swap out the axles later on, so do whatever you think is easiest. We busted the axle nuts off with an impact wrench, and everything else came off rather easily. Pulling the axles out of the tranny required the use of a 10-lb. slide hammer, and removing the tie rod ends was accomplished with a few fell whacks with Thor, our trusty 10-lb. sledge hammer.

Once you are sure that everything is removed/disconnected, you can hook up the engine hoist to the engine. A load leveler is very helpful in this respect, as it allows you to tilt the engine to get out of the bay. Hook up the engine to the hoist, and put a little tension on the chains. Now, you can start removing the mounts. Once all the mounts are removed, start jacking up the hoist and pay close attention to make sure that the engine is not getting caught on anything: wires, hoses, parts, etc. You may need to continually adjust the leveler and hoist to get it out, but with some patience, it'll happen.

Once the engine is well clear of the car, get it out of the way, and lower the engine onto a hand truck or something. Strangely enough, the 4A-F is far too heavy for such a slow engine. Keep the engine/tranny in a dry place, out of the way. You will need to slowly pick away at it, getting miscellaneous connectors and brackets off of it thoughout the course of the conversion.

I took the time to clean out the nasty engine bay at this time. It's amazing how much crap accumulates in the bay after a hard 12 years on the road. After a thorough cleaning with Simple Green and some scrub brushes, the engine bay should look something like this:

Note the upper strut tower brace, ala GT-S style. Another junk yard find, and only required removing the wipers and cowl area grill to access the backside, and drilling 2 holes for the center mount.

Now, when the engine, tranny, and axles are out of the car, it's important that you do not try to remount the wheels and tires and push the car around like that. If you place the weight of the car on the hubs, you will destroy the unsupported bearings. It's best to rest the car on jackstands when you are or aren't working on it, and move it around via a large floor jack if you need to move the car around.

If memory serves, we started the 4A-F drivetrain removal around 6:30 PM and finished by 11:00 PM. I'd already pulled my drivetrain out of my car a few times, so I knew some shortcuts and what to look out for. We also carefully bagged, labeled, and put away all of the components; you should be doing the same. -Carl