Engine swap – getting enough clearance with a Quickjack

[elgyqc]

Love my Quickjack… but it doesn’t rise high enough to get a Boxster engine out from under the car, so on the two engine swaps that I have done so far I ended up using my engine hoist to lift the rear of the car to get necessary clearance. The problem with this method is that when the car is not sitting on the four contact points on the Quickjacks it is unstable, the Quickjacks tend to swivel up on the front end.
So I have a new plan for the next swap, that should be soon. There are two choices - get the car higher or the engine lower… I plan to do both to find at least 6 additional inches.
1) I will drive the car onto planks, with the Quickjacks placed on the planks, so that will add 1 ½ inches.
2) When I lift the car I will put higher blocks on the rear contact points of the Quickjacks. Adding even 2 inches there will translate into at least 3 inches at the critical point where the engine passes under the rear suspension.
3) I have built a new dolly for the engine, with casters mounted on blocks that are attached to the engine where the exhaust manifolds normally sit. The casters are placed to barely clear the oil pan. There is now about ¾ of an inch between the oil pan and the floor. On the furniture dolly I used before there are 5 inches. So that gives me over 4 inches.

I should have about 8 ½ inches more than normally.

Here are some pictures of my “Low rise dolly”... installed on the engine.



Detail of one side.



This gives an idea of the clearance to the floor.



It has been tested on the floor and it is sturdy and easy to move around.

[986RennWagen]

Curious, what is the total clearance needed to drop the engine? Dropping a 914 engine is a piece of cake, figured this would be a similar process (more to unbolt, obviously)

[BrakeExpert]

20 points for building **************** to get the job done, nice work dude.

[elgyqc]

Originally Posted by 986RennWagen

Curious, what is the total clearance needed to drop the engine? Dropping a 914 engine is a piece of cake, figured this would be a similar process (more to unbolt, obviously)

Your are right there is a lot of stuff to disconnect. If you have a lift the actual engine removal is not too bad, my problem is that the Quickjacks, that are great for most jobs, come up just a bit short for wheeling the engine out. If I remember it is the bolts where the diagonal reenforcing pieces attach that are the lowest point.
I don't remember what the necessary clearance is... but is a couple of inches more than the lift of a Quickjack 3500.

[NewArt]

Who's a clever boy?!

[elgyqc]

Originally Posted by NewArt

Who's a clever boy?!

Well... the winter was long and I had to do something... but winter's officially over and I got the Boxster S (still with the 2.7 engine) hacked out of the ice and on the road yesterday!

[elgyqc]

I got the engine out from under the car this morning. It did not go as planned. Although the low boy dolly is a good idea I ran into a problem. I lowered the engine with jacks under the engine and the transmission, then use my engine hoist to lift it off the jacks, remove the jacks and then lower the engine. Lowering it onto a furniture dolly is no problem, but with my low boy dolly (explained above) the engine is too wide to go between the legs of the engine hoist. So after much playing around (complicated by the fact that the engine hoist's hydraulic cylinder leaks down fairly rapidly, so the hoist will not hold a weight) I went back to the furniture dolly.
Happily, the other changes to the procedure mentioned in the first post were enough to get the rear of the car high enough that the engine, on the furniture dolly, just squeaked under the suspension mounts and the rear bumper. I didn't have to remove the bumper cover. I plan to find a way to do this without the engine hoist, if possible.

Originally Posted by 986RennWagen

Curious, what is the total clearance needed to drop the engine? Dropping a 914 engine is a piece of cake, figured this would be a similar process (more to unbolt, obviously)

The removal as described was with the bottom of the bumper cover 28 1/2" off the garage floor (measured at its lowest point beside the cutout for the exhaust) sitting on a 5 1/2" furniture dolly.

[Bush Pilot]

Originally Posted by 986RennWagen

Curious, what is the total clearance needed to drop the engine? Dropping a 914 engine is a piece of cake, figured this would be a similar process (more to unbolt, obviously)

The poster appears to have an engine stand that is a few inches off the ground so it’s not clear to me that the quickjack is t high enough. It depends upon how high the engine stand is.

[elgyqc]

Hopefully I have found the best way to do an engine swap with my equipment. I have constructed a new low-rise dolly that is designed to allow the floor jack to slide under it.
First I bolt a piece of 1/4"" plywood with the center cut out of it to the oil pan, so the weight is on the edges of the pan not the somewhat fragile center. The engine is placed on the dolly and pushed under the car. Working from the front I roll the jack under the car than under the dolly and start lifting. There is a separate transmission jack under the transmission. It is then a question of raising the two jacks an inch or two at time while checking the clearances. I did a swap this way, working alone, and it went pretty well. I was worried that the engine might tip sideways on the jack, but it was fairly stable but I had my engine hoist in place with a strap around the clutch area as a backup.



Bottom of the dolly