Getting Started

With the Jaguar out in the yard, there was a space in the garage for the Caprice. As always, it started on the first try. I pulled it into the garage and shut it off for the last time. I didn't feel too bad, knowing that the engine would live on in the Jaguar. I unbolted the fiberglass hood, propped it against the garage wall, and got started removing stuff. The radiator and the condensor came out pretty easily.

My dad came by to supervise. By the end of the session we had made a pretty good start, and there was a pile of Caprice parts on the garage floor. Some will go into the Jaguar, and some will go to John.

Round Two

I had done a little more work on the Caprice, but still wasn't ready to pull the engine. The wiring harness was free, and most of the coolers, and the driveshaft, but there was still some work to do. (The police 9C1 cars have a transmission cooler, an oil cooler, and a power steering cooler). Then I got a call from John, asking how the car was going. I gave him and update, and he said he was on his way.

We got right into it. I ended up cutting through the exhaust downpipes with a sawzall, because the nuts holding the downpipe to the exhaust manifold were just too badly rusted. I got everything disconnected, and we figured why not go ahead and pull the engine? John called his friend from the Impala SS forum, who gave us a few tips on how to go about it. I ignored most of them, but as you would expect we ended up doing it his way in the end. We got hung up a few times on the exhaust, but in the end we had the engine hanging from the hoist, just like the Jaguar engine.

We left the engine hanging there. With a big hole in the Caprice, where we had ripped the heart right out of it.

And There's Video

Linda took all the photos on this page, but there was more. She also shot two videos, each one minute long. And neither John or me looks too dorky in them! And the video looks good. So at John's suggestion, I figured out how to upload them to YouTube, and how to embed them on this page. Enjoy!

Next will be a long period of preparing the LT1 engine to go into the Jaguar.