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I have decided to tackle my first RX300 engine swap. I have the engine stripped and harness tied away. This one is AWD. All my research tells me to drop the entire front suspension pan with the drive train on it. But I had the bright idea of just removing all of the tranny bolts and splitting the motor away for a quick R&R. So after all of that, including removing the torque converter bolts, I can only split the engine about 1/8" from the tranny. Then absolutely no movement from there!
I know that the transfer case is in super close proximity, and I have the rear motor mount completely removed, but I cannot get the motor separated from the transmission.
I have a low-miles engine ready to drop in and have checked every bolt hole on the block to make sure I didn't miss any bolts holding it on to the tranny. Best of my knowledge I have removed them all..
Does anyone have any thoughts/solutions?
Extrication is just part of the bigger process. I understand that right now that is the first step.
Based on what I have gleaned (read not performed), you will need some room to measure and couple the transmission to the engine [there are some critical measurements from the torque converter]. Knowing this upfront, would lead me to take out the transmission along with the engine. Mate them outside and then swing the whole assembly in.
If I am right, you may have put some bolts back in to secure the two pieces together.
How are you separating the motor from the transmission? Are prying the motor away from the trans while the transmission is still mounted on the subframe? FYI daltongd's RX300 is FWD and in my opinion you CAN remove the engine without removing the subframe on a FWD platform because there's room behind the motor (see picture below: you can see the control arm bolted to the subframe). For AWD, I think you can't remove the motor due to the transfer case will be in your way.
I'm in the process of removing my motor on my awd RX300 and I was going to do the same route like you but after reviewing how much room you have between the transfer case and the motor there's not a lot of room to do remove the transfer case away from the transmission due to the motor. My plan was to remove the transfer case away from the transmission, then remove the transmission from the motor because there is a lot of room on the transmission area. I'm going to try and remove the engine this week end. I'll keep you posted.
I have a whole thread on how I pulled the engine. If you have access to a lift then its a no brainer, you should drop from the bottom. Honestly when I look in the engine bay I don't really see how they remove the transmission from the engine bay without dropping the whole sub frame but I was told they can do that. Everything I was able to find said you had to pull the engine by dropping it and I ended up doing it twice (chasing a oil leak) and it is not very hard at all, if you have a lift it would be easy. If you don't have a lift you will need a lot of wood blocks but you can do it. It will take about 3 hours to lower the engine and raise the car using floor jacks.
I realize this thread is old news, but I thought I'd contribute some notes about my recent experience.
I was able to pull the engine from my RX300 (FWD) from the top using a regular engine lift. There is indeed very little clearance allowing the engine to separate from the transmission. You definitely need a few centimeters to allow the nipple on the torque converter to clear the flex plate crankshaft mounting bolts. The trick, I used a floor jack to help tilt the transmission up. With the engine hanging on by the crane, and the transmission held up by the floor jack, you've got clearance to tug the engine off.
RX300 Engine/Trans Split (Engine Swap)
