Well, I have a 1982 F150 with an I-6. I'm having some massive trouble with the combination manifold, and probably need a new head gasket to boot. I was just wondering about what I should do to pull the motor to make it all wasier to work on. If someone has a step-by-step, that would be great, but just any little tricks y'all have found while working on it would be great. What I'm working on now is pulling the radiator and the supports there to make it easier to pull, so I have to lift less and can just slide it all forward. What I'm looking for is little things like that.

 

You should be able to disconnect the spring and scissor mechanism from the hood then pull it almost straight up with a rope tied to the hood latch then up and over the cab and tie to the bedside or rear bumper. This eliminates the need to remove the hood. I have not removed the hood to pull an engine in many years in trucks or cars.

 

The hood's been off for almost a week.

 

A Haynes manual for your year model truck is a good investment. It'll give a lot of good pointers. I have one for every vehicle I've owned for the past several years.

 

I have the chiltons manual, and it's usually pretty helpful, but for the engine, they seem to think I'm workign in a professional shop, and not a garage where i don't even have enough room to hoist the engine up.

 

My dad had an '81 F100 with the 300. We found the easiest (although time consuming) way to pull the engine was taking the front clip off. Although it can be pulled without messing with the front clip, just takes an engine hoist that can lift up fairly high, a leveller so you can tilt the engine around and another pair of hands to guide the engine up and out.

 

No worries. Got the manifold out, repaired, and reinstalled. I ended up just using some studs on the ends to facilitate reinstallation, and it's working brilliantly. It's gonna be up for sale too, soon. a-Yup!