Dropped the engine, uh, now what?

Yup, I knew all about getting that engine outta there, but now what? What don't I need anymore? Gas tank? Yes! Starter? Yes! Okay, let's do that.

15 minutes later: Well, that was comparatively easy. I'm used to the engine drop. What the hell?

Okay, there's a bunch of crap stuck underneath the transmission. I reckon that could be 40 years of crud under there, okay, let's chisel it off.

I read somewhere on a VW forum that spraying oven cleaner (yes! oven cleaner) on parts of yer greased up car would work pretty well in getting the grease off. The post even mentioned "oven cleaner from the .99 cents store" working perfectly. I've got a .99 cents store, right around the corner! Okay, this I can do.

Got some oven gloves, got some metallic sponges, got some .99 cent oven cleaner. Sprayed it all over the underside of the tranny. (snicker)

Waited a while.

Waited.

Waited.

Wiped. 

Did I spray enough on there?

Spray.

Spray.

Wait.

wait.

WIPE!

Well, that's disappointing. It made the curd kind of 'moist', but not really the grease cutting action I was looking for. 

I had some Simple Green formula for auto cleaning (purchased for another application...probably to clean my BBQ last year,) so I broke that out. Now we're getting somewhere. So i had a small square dowel I used to scrape this crud away. I spent most of my day doing this. I think it'll pay off in the end, as I'll have to keep getting my hands on this tranny (double snicker), and spend time under the car. I don't want this crud continually falling in my eyes. The crud in the picture, is some of what I chiseled off.

A feeling of tepid self-satisfaction sets in at the end of the day. But that's mostly cuz I fixed our ancient wall hung, high pull chain toilet on this same day. I should dedicate a blog to that.