We set out to rent a hoist while Bill began to disconnect everything. Disconnecting everything was a pretty simple and straightforward process.
After everything was disconnected and the hoist arrived, we hooked up a chain to the block and began to hoist the engine out.
We mounted the engine to an engine stand and began to take off the intake and the heads.
Turns out, some knucklehead had the inside painted with Rustoleum, which was flaking terribly. The valve covers came off, then the heads.
Guess what we found when the heads came off? There was water/coolant completely flooding three of the 8 cylinders. (Note for the non-gearheads: that's not good). We drained them and began to do some investigating.
Headgaskets were blown on both sides. The flaky rustoleum made everything all funk of a gooey gunk. We're not sure which came first: the flakes or the blown gasket. The good news is that it's an easy fix. Also good news was the fact that someone had the engine bored .030" over and put in some really slick forged pistons (read: more power). We also found out that it's got really nice headers that cost someone a fortune. (I keep saying "someone" because I have no idea who has owned this thing in the last 42 years it's been around)
We still need to pull it apart the rest of the way, but it's downhill from here. We're going to get everything machined: have the cylinders honed, have the heads pressure tested and machined, re-seat all of the valves, redo the bearing and the shafts. I figure I'll get everything painted while the engine is out. I'm going to get a big box of stuff to take to the powder coater to get media blasted and coated hi-temp black.
More updates to come.
The rest of the pictures are in the engine removal album, and other pictures can be found in the gallery.