Pulling a 331 Caddy and Hydromatic transmission - how hard?

[Southfork]

A guy at the wrecking yard spared a rusted out 1954 Cadillac from the crusher because I told him I wanted the engine and transmission and would give him $100 for them. I was able to turn the engine over by man-handling the crank pulley, so I figure it's probably worth the tariff. However, I have to unbolt the engine, trans and driveshaft myself, or It'll cost a bunch more. This made me wonder if it'll be a bitch to remove this stuff from the engine bay. Anybody ever removed one of these power plants from an original Caddy? Are there any unexpected difficulties to be wncountered in doing it? I mean, more difficult than in any other 50-year-old car? Hope the engine/trans are worth the effort. BTW, the car has a decent hubcap on one wheel.

[randy]

Not hard. I pulled the one on my '56 Cad w/ very little problem. I'm sure you were planning on it anyway, but leave the tranny bolted up & pull 'em both together. Enjoy!
-R

[55olds88]

how hard is it to drop the front x member ? you could probably unbolt it and pull the body off the top easier...

[Southfork]

The wrecking yard's big front-end loader will be available for this job once i get everything unbolted. BTW, I'll be looking for a bigger intake and carb when I get this thing home. What's available aftermarket?

[cadlights]

See if you can sweetalk him into rolling the cad up on
it's side, then you can undo every thing on the bottom
while he crushes some other cars and then come back and roll it back and do the topside. I've done this several times and it makes a 3-4 hour job about 1 hour. Take your normal tools plus a pair of sidecutters and a hacksaw.
Takes a lot of the pain away. Good luck.

[BigJim394]

This shouldn't be that much of a job. Cutting off the exhaust pipes from the exhaust manifolds might be the hardest part (or you could get lucky and the bolts/nuts that hold the pipes on won't be frozen).
Take off ALL of the kickdown/trottle valve linkage between the carb and the trans...it could get easily damaged in pulling the engine/trans with that loader and it's hard to find. You might want to remove the trans dipstick tube too...that could get damaged pretty easily during the pull too.