After unhooking the driveshaft, unbolting the transmission mount, yanking the radiator, and disconnecting everything from the engine, I pulled the engine and transmission back out of the car again to swap the bell-housing on the transmission. I yanked a spare off of a long-tail 5-speed I had sitting around, and I wanted to go ahead and take care of the 15-degree twist on the transmission.

Unfortunately... the bellhousing on the transmission that's currently connected to the engine doesn't come off. Yeah. All that work for absolutely nothing. At least I figured it out before I pulled the transmission off entirely -- I hate mounting transmissions.

Since the engine is out of the car, I can either save up some money for a good L-series 5-speed, or I can just ignore the 15-degree twist and carry on. I think that's probably what I'll do, since the transmission does work. It sure sucks that I had to pull it all out, though. That pretty much killed the 1.5 hours I had in the garage today.

While the engine was out, I figured I'd try another compression test. The last time I did it, the battery was too low to crank the engine fast enough, and I ended up with 40 psi or something, which made no sense. With the engine charged, I got the following readings:

(from firewall to radiator)
1: 125
2: 140
3: 140
4: 145

The #1 cylinder has me a little concerned... but it might be low because that cylinder is shaved down a little more than the rest. It's just a hair lower... and I don't know if it'll drastically impact performance. This isn't a high-performance engine or anything.

The engine and tranny are back in the bay, dangling from the engine hoist. I still need to find a passenger-side engine mount bracket, and then fabricate a bracket for the transmission so it'll bolt up properly.

So much work...