Ever Pulled A (Full-Sized U.S.) Van Engine?

I've been half-assedly looking around at what would make a great, cheap, multi-purpose towing/utility-type vehicle. Full-sized vans are relatively cheap and stupid cheap (sometimes at, or near scrap price) if the engine is bad. Now, I've never pulled an engine from a van, or even seen it done, but some of these vans I have run across even come with an uninstalled replacement engine! Owners just don't want to deal with the no-doubt awesome experience of R&R. So, I figured a tutorial was in order to see just exactly what is involved. This is the first one I stumbled upon.

Pulling An Engine On A Snub-Nosed Van

Kinda cool!

Who else has experience/ideas/video?

on my astro which is very similar to a full sized van, i did not want to drop the subframe out from under the body so i cut out the top of the core support and pulled it out the front, replaced, and welded part back in.

Full size ford 1 ton van, less than 1/2 hr to pull the engine. Cherry picker, and the bolts all moving easy because I had just installed it. Ran for 10 minutes and the rods started knocking. Anger can make a job go a lot faster, as well as the process still in your head from installing the motor less than 15 minutes earlier.

Been there done that no t-shirt... Pull grill radiator, condenser, core support off front of van. Pull everything in the way off the front of the engine. Strap cherry picker arm to intake, pick the engine up gently and slide it out the front....

I did not one but two 5.4 engines in E-series vans. Not the suckiest job I've done but very close. Basically, you pull everything off of the nose but the bumper, then you pull the accessories partway off, then you pull the intake manifold. THEN you can think about the cherrypicker and undoing the motor mounts and transmission. This is all working with no room to fit your hand anywhere, with fasteners that are all siezed and rounded off because it's a truck old enough to have a hurt engine.

Flat rate calls for 8 hours, that is a blatant lie. The first one was 24 solid hours of labor and the second was 20, including cleaning and swapping the tinwork over (bare longblocks).

Thats how you do Ford pickups, too. The guys that work on them as lot will barely change spark plugs without lifting the cab...

Which generation? The '97-up generation has a core support that is welded to the cab. No unbolting. We avoided pulling the cab off so far.

Figure this out. The 4.2 is a tighter squeeze than the 4.6. To pull the 4.2 out you need to clean everything off of the front cover, including the harmonic damper. Then it just baaarely clears. Weird.

The 4.6 was a fun one. Guy bought the truck from a buy-here-pay-here place and the engine was noisy. After taking it to them a few times, it came to us. They tried changing the oil pump, and to get it off without pulling the oil pan, they cut a channel out of the oil pan to access the pickup tube bolt. Which they didn't put back in. After the camshafts siezed, they loosened the cam caps two or three turns and put the valve covers back on.

And THEN, we got two wrong engines for it. A 4.6 is not a 4.6 is not a 4.6, there's Romeo and there's Windsor...

I've done five or six, my mom and I hauled Amish so we went through those vans like crazy. We found jacking the van up gave us the best line out for the engine. These were all dodges but I'm sure Chevy and ford are similar.

It seems like you would always be chasing gremlins when finished.

I did a Chevy van in my driveway once. By myself. Was amazed that I had to pull off the entire front end. Got it back in and found that the replacement engine was toast. Sold it as-is for a decent amount. Don't think I will do that again.

Ford E something 1/2 ton with a SBF. It sucked, but not as bad as doing the Esprit. Do note that a Ford van with a pushrod 302 sux bad at towing. My friend blew the original motor towing. We put in a store rebuilt 302. Blew that one towing. Vato-Zone warrantied it so they paid a shop to swap that one. I think he blew that motor towing too. I don't think the 302 was made to tow.

Yes, Most recent was a SBF 5.8L but the transmission was already removed and I had help. ~3 hrs at the pull-a-part yard.

That video is all fine and dandy IF you have easy access to a 2 post lift. Not really a DIY solution.

Knurled wrote: Which generation? The '97-up generation has a core support that is welded to the cab. No unbolting. We avoided pulling the cab off so far.

97 up, there is no reason to avoid it. Thats how they were built at the factory, thats how they come apart. Half a dozen friends and some leather gloves, you should be able to lift the cab off if you don't have a hoist..

chandlerGTi wrote: I've done five or six, my mom and I hauled Amish so we went through those vans like crazy.

What the hell does that mean?

Amish are heavy, at least multiple Amish.

Paul_VR6 wrote: Amish are heavy, at least multiple Amish.

LOL.

We call them Yoder Toters here in PA.

Woody wrote:

chandlerGTi wrote: I've done five or six, my mom and I hauled Amish so we went through those vans like crazy.

What the hell does that mean?

Amish don't do anything "fancy." that means they can't drive because driving a car is a decadence that leads to sin. They therefore hire "fancy" folk like us to be their drivers.

The amount of variation between sects of Amish is pretty wide. Some refuse to own tractors, others will own a tractor but it can't have rubber tires, and some (more progressive) sects can own their own vehicles but not drive them.

Around here we often see "yoder toters" (named for the fact that Yoder is a common Amish surname) or "black bumpers." (named for the fact that chrome is a no-no so they paint the bumpers black.)

My dad's friend built a house near Chambersburg, PA using regular contractors who hire Amish labor. Many of them would show up riding with the contractors in their trucks, but a few showed up in grey horse-drawn buggies.

Right, sorry. We ran the vans to 500000 all the time, a timing chain every 100k and keep going. In the course of using up so many vans we started buying diplomats to transplant engines out of. Easier to get the "new" engine out.

It basically was a taxi service for people who didn't have any car and wanted to go somewhere the horse couldn't take them.

Moving_Target wrote: That video is all fine and dandy IF you have easy access to a 2 post lift. Not really a DIY solution.

I'm thinking the same could be done with a well thought out hoist system. That video is also the only video on You Tube that I have found that actually shows an engine being removed from this type of van. There may be more through other sites, but video pickin's on this subject seems pretty slim.

You Tube hasn't failed me. Here is everything anyone needs to know about van engine removal.

Part 1

Part 2

Here's another one.

Solo Pull

This one seems to kinda set the mood for how I would feel while trying to pull this off. The guy's face projects kind of an "Eff You" expression that seems to be aimed at the engine once freed. I think I would be duplicating that expression. I'm going to have to think long and hard before I attempt to pull off anything like this. Maybe I'll just buy a good running one.

My dad has used vans for most of his working life so I'm fairly well acquainted with working on vans. They are not impossible but be prepared to swear, a lot.

@Streetwiseguy:

Friends? What friends? I don't have 6 friends.

The 5.8L pull was accomplished with removing the upper intake, front dress, exhaust manifolds from the heads, breaking off what was left of the front core support (it already had a bunch of fatigue cracks which was weird) and pushing it out from the back with my legs. It cooperated and rolled forward over the front cross-member without any extra drama which was very lucky.

carzan wrote:

Moving_Target wrote: That video is all fine and dandy IF you have easy access to a 2 post lift. Not really a DIY solution.

I'm thinking the same could be done with a well thought out hoist system. That video is also the only video on You Tube that I have found that actually shows an engine being removed from this type of van. There may be more through other sites, but video pickin's on this subject seems pretty slim.

Hmm, the only big problem I can see with that approach is having enough ceiling height to "pull" it off.

"Haulin' Amish" sounds like a line from a Weird Al Yankovic song.

Streetwiseguy wrote: 97 up, there is no reason to avoid it. Thats how they were built at the factory, thats how they come apart. Half a dozen friends and some leather gloves, you should be able to lift the cab off if you don't have a hoist..

Not pulling the cab saves the trouble of replacing all of the brake and fuel lines and dealing with broken cab mounting bolts. Also, we're a cramped shop, we can't pull a cab off without rolling the chassis outside to work on it, assuming that we could get the cab high enough in the first place.

I've seen the cab-pulling lifts at the dealerships, though. Looks nice if you have the room for it.

Moving_Target wrote: My dad has used vans for most of his working life so I'm fairly well acquainted with working on vans. They are not impossible but be prepared to swear, a lot. @Streetwiseguy: Friends? What friends? I don't have 6 friends. The 5.8L pull was accomplished with removing the upper intake, front dress, exhaust manifolds from the heads, breaking off what was left of the front core support (it already had a bunch of fatigue cracks which was weird) and pushing it out from the back with my legs. It cooperated and rolled forward over the front cross-member without any extra drama which was very lucky.

carzan wrote:

Moving_Target wrote: That video is all fine and dandy IF you have easy access to a 2 post lift. Not really a DIY solution.

I'm thinking the same could be done with a well thought out hoist system. That video is also the only video on You Tube that I have found that actually shows an engine being removed from this type of van. There may be more through other sites, but video pickin's on this subject seems pretty slim.

Hmm, the only big problem I can see with that approach is having enough ceiling height to "pull" it off.

Might have to be an outside job.