I pulled my from diff off before pulling out old motor. And put it back in after new motor was in car. I guess I never evaluated if the motor would come out with it still attached. But if it would; I would go that route because it is a real PITA to take off and put in while in the car. I had to make up some sub frame spacers out of 2" box tube which I inserted between the sub frame and the car frame. Got some longer bolts and bolted it back to the car. This served many proposes. It gave me room to remove the diff, gave me room to move steering rack, and gave me 2" more clearance for valve covers to clear the firewall and AC lines putting the motor in and out. So the car basically had the front end jacked up for a while. I also was able to change the motor with out removing the tranny or transfer case. But as it turned out; the Torque convertor got damaged in the process of the swap and since I wasn't positive that the input shaft wasn't damaged as well. I swapped out the tranny with a low mileage used one. I also swapped the T-case foe a low mileage unit while I was at it as well. But then found out after I got it all running that the bearings in T-case were bad and had to swap my original one back in. What a Freaking nightmare this whole ordeal has been. So I'm about 1,000 man hours and $4,000 deep into a car that's worth about $4,000 . lol. But it has 3,000 miles on it now since all of its transplants; and seems to be doing well.

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Barry in Wisconsin