Last night I was able to get the engine rotated 90 degrees on my pizza board and turned sideways inside the engine compartment. That has to be done to slide it out the back of the car. There is really no room to spare while rotating it and it takes as much care as when you lower the engine to not have anything hang up on something. Just take your time and you'll see what needs to be adjusted.
When I finally got the board to slide to the very back of the car I was about 3" too short. I read up on removing the bumper and decided on just jacking the car up higher. I gave up for the night and decided to just get on it today.
Today I was able to get home from work a little early and get on it. Jacking up the car in stages I got it just high enough to clear and slide the engine out where I could begin working on it.
It's actually a pretty sizable chunk of machinery.
The intake manifold comes off in a fairly large unit, and with it comes the wiring harness, plug wires, fuel rails and fuel injectors, and some random bits. After examining it for a few minutes I could see the places where it all had to come apart and it looked pretty easy.
I started by grabbing a roll of blue tape and a sharpie pen and labeling all the wire connections. Truth be told most of them are one of a kind in their given neighborhoods so there aren't a lot of places to screw up. However it is good to take the time to grasp every connector and figure out what it does. It will certainly help on assembly and if nothing else I now know for certain where every one of them is in case one goes TU.
The knock sensors are a little hard to reach until the manifold is pulled part way off. You also need to tend to a crankcase hose, alternator connections, a vacuum line and the plastic tube for the AOS. I took several pictures to help un furball things later.
Then off it came.
Next up will be removing the starter, alternator, power steering pump, oil cooler, oil filler tube, EGR and it should start looking like a big metal suitcase.
Then it will be time to get oily.