For the past couple of years the Porsche clutch has been slipping. I haven’t been able to really stomp on the gas, and I’ve had to nurse it a bit on steep hills. I was determined on this visit to do something about it, so with a quick road trip to Seattle planned for Thursday morning, I had a buddy come over with jackstands and a box of tools, and went about dropping the engine out—for the first time—on Sunday night. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

It’s important to block the wheels whenever you jack a car up.

Modern day mechanics. Google: How to drop a Porsche 356 engine.

Forget Google, bring in the real brains of the operation.

Oops, didn’t jack it up high enough to actually get the engine out from underneath.

From here it was a simple job to replace the clutch and throwout bearing. I’d done this same job on the VW bus by myself with nothing but a tiny bottle jack and two-by-four, but on the bus you get to slide the engine straight out the back. Not quite so easy dropping the engine through the floor, but we got there.

Used my noggin’ a bit here and put a screw on this bolt head so I wouldn’t have to hold it to tighten it back up.

The next day I lifted the engine back up on my own, got it on the four bolts and tried to press it in, but couldn’t get it to go the last inch. After I was thoroughly cut up and sore, I gave up, dropped the engine back down, and called for reinforcements. I popped the clutch off again, double checked that everything was lined up properly, then three of us gave it a wiggle, a push, and slid it right on. This was at eleven Tuesday night.

Wednesday I hooked everything back up without a problem. In fact it all went much more smoothly than the removal. The exhaust pipes had to come off for the engine drop, which had required a fair bit of hammering. My buddy quipped that he wasn’t sure hammers were on the German engineers’ list of tools. Once they were off the car I was able to sand them a little bit so that they slipped right back together.

With everything wired up, I dropped the car back on the ground, climbed in and pressed the clutch—right down to the floor. Crap.

Okay, well, let’s see if the car starts. Nope. Double crap.

Looked in the engine and quickly found that I forgot the coil wire. Engine fired up immediately. One problem solved.

The clutch was a little trickier, but in the end was nothing more than adjusting the pedal.

The kids piled in the car and we zipped off to test it out. Success. I could stomp on the gas pedal again. The kids squealed with delight, and so did I.

Done, with an entire twelve hours to spare before we hit the road for Seattle.