Chrysler Sebring, Day 4

We got the motor out today. The more I read the directions, and the more I looked at the situation, the more I thought the instructions were all wet. I also remembered an episode of Rides I saw recently where they were building a new General Lee (the orange Dodge Charger from The Dukes of Hazzard), and they were talking about how it was easier to take the engine out from under the car than to pull it out of the top because the engine, the transmission and the front suspension were all bolted together on a subframe called a K member.

You have to remember this is heresy. The General Lee is from like 1970, and all V8 engines from all American automobiles are supposed to come out the top, and go back in the same way. That's the way I learned it, and dad-gum-it that's the way it's always been and that's the way it will always be. Except not. Here we've got a bunch of gear-heads saying no, the engine comes out of the bottom.

Pay no attention to the girl, this is a picture of the General Lee. 

Now I'm looking at this Chrysler Sebring, and I'm seeing the same thing: engine, transmission and front suspension all bolted to this one K shaped piece of metal. So I decided to dispense with disassembling the front suspension and pulling out the drive shafts and all that and just dropped the whole assembly. It took a bit of fiddling with sticks and bricks to make a scaffold to support this whole mess. There was some chasing around to disconnect hidden bits as we were lowering it out. We cut the exhaust pipe with a borrowed sawzall as the bolts were firmly rusted in place. We also cut the rubber covered plastic fuel line. We will probably regret that, but there didn't seem to be any place to disconnect it.

The whole thing probably weighs 700 pounds. It took some serious tugging to get it out from under the car. I think we are going to move stuff away from it to get room to work on it rather that trying to move it any farther.

Update June 2015: Replaced pictures that Blogger lost.