Recently, my buddy Greg Stewart got married (congrats dude!), and before he did that, we had a bachelor party in his honor. At the end of the evening after a night full of old-school fun, a bunch of my buddies and I were trading stories about when we were young and stupid, and I was reminded of a good one: the first time we pulled an engine from a vehicle. I then remembered that I actually had some pictures of us pulling the engine out on an old hard drive somewhere. After some digging, I found them! So, let’s step in the way-back machine and travel back in time to the year 2001, on New Year’s Eve…

Most of the same guys at that bachelor party were at my buddy’s house, and we were enjoying some adult beverages. I had a fresh copy of the Want Ad, and I was flipping through looking for trouble. And then I found it:

“1983 Chevrolet Camaro Z28, 305, manual trans, T-tops, not running, needs resto, $325”

I circled it and began bench racing with the guys for the rest of the night. I had a void in the driveway after selling my high school hot rod, a 1987 Mercury Cougar XR7. I was in college, and I wanted a cheap, affordable project, and this car fit the bill perfectly. I had visions of cruising the strip blaring Whitesnake and Dokken out of the ERS sound system like every other 3^rd Gen Camaro did in its heyday. I recalled being carted around in the two different Camaros in my young life: a black 1982 Z28 owned by my mom’s friend, and my father’s buddy’s blue 1988 IROC 350. I had to at least call on it!

The Camaro, as I found it. By my current standards, this thing was clean! I wish I still had it.

The next day, I called on the car. The owner’s mom answered and told me that the car was still available, so I set up a time to come check it out. I rented a trailer from Uhaul and set off with my buddies to Orleans, MA on Cape Cod to check out the car. When we got there, I was informed that the car was purchased as a parts car for another Camaro, so some of the parts were not on the car. I checked over the car, and it was mostly complete, but it needed some help. There were a few parts missing here and there, but nothing a couple junkyard runs couldn’t solve. And it came with some spare parts, like a later Camaro RS nose and a spare fender to replace the crunched nose and fender on the car. Only catch was that the owner was out of town and his mom couldn’t find the title until he got back. But the car was mostly solid, and I was blinded by project car bliss, so I plunked down the $325 and loaded it up!

It had the most broken-sounding LG4 305 ever. I had no idea how, but it idled and took throttle. And check out the composite Z28 hood! Those are hard to find today.

But wait… there’s more! Right before we left, the brother of the owner tells us that the family has a piece of property up the road they needed to clean out, and there was a derelict 1988-89 GMC full size van with a 350 in it that we could take if we could get it before the next week when they planned on scrapping the van. SWEET!!! But there’s one problem: I had never pulled an engine before. And I had ZERO clue how to get an engine out of a full size van. But I had a plan.

I recalled an issue of Car Craft Magazine where then-editor Matt King was praising the virtues of the ever-versatile cordless reciprocating saw, or as he called it, “The Tool”. There was an infamous article of how to pull an engine at the junkyard yourself, and he said that you basically could do the entire pull with a socket set, an engine hoist, and a cordless Sawzall. Well, my dad had a cordless Sawzall, and I could rent a hoist, so this shouldn’t be a problem, right? I called Greg up, who was home from college on winter break, and he was game. We charged up the Sawzall batteries, gathered some sockets, picked up a hoist from a tool rental place, and loaded up his questionable S10 Blazer and hit the road.

When we got there, the van was still there, and we got to work. To our surprise, the transmission had already been pulled! Less work for us! But we still had no clue how to pull an engine out of a van. Enter the Sawzall. We popped the hood and started cutting anything and everything in the way. Yes, we cut a hole in the front of the van to pull the 350 out! That thing was so sad looking after we plucked it’s heart out. Poor van…

Then we ran into another issue: the lot where the van was located was basically a mud pit, and the hoist wouldn’t roll. Solution: strap the hoist to the Blazer and drag the engine out! Did I mention it was beginning to snow, and this was a 2.8L V6-powered Blazer with 2WD? After a lot of tire spinning and me standing on the hoist acting as ballast (kids, don’t try that at home!), out it came!

The only casualty? A chunk of Greg’s forehead when he was crawling around cutting chunks of the core support out. It could have been a lot worse.

Looking back, I can only imagine what’s going through Greg’s mind in this picture. Either he’s pumped that we just scored a roller cam, 4-bolt main 350 for free, or he was plotting to kill me. My guess is it was the latter.

Of course I had to get a shot from the inside of the van, peering through the gaping hole we cut with “The Tool”. I mean, seriously, can you think of a better way to remove an engine from a junk van? I still can’t.

I unfortunately ended up ditching that Camaro about 6 months later after buying a running, driving 1979 Trans Am, but I never will forget pulling that engine from that poor van. The 350 ended up being my first V8 engine teardown as well, and I learned a ton about engines from that thing, including the fact that leaving one outside over the winter could result in cracking the block. But that is how you learn, folks. And learn we did. We are still doing this stuff, and while we still do all sorts of stupid things involving cars, we seem to be getting better at it!

What was your first engine pull like? Was it an easy job, or was it as ridiculous as my experience? Share it with us in the comments below!