Hi all.
I'm sure this has been done before, but it might bear repeating.

If you're a one man show, and have limited room to use floor jack to scoot
the engine back once it's free, this may help. It also helps in that you can
move the engine around more easily. FWIW, I would have removed the handle
from the jack, but this just seemed totally unsafe.

Basically you make a dolly that rolls under engine when van still on ground,
and has enough room between rails for floor jack to go underneath it.

I made mine this way. Your jack may be different. YMMV! Also this design is
not meant for a lot of use.

With jack saddle seated, I measured height from floor to saddle. Mine turned
out to be ~ 6".

Each rail of dolly:

2 pieces of 2x4 and a 3/4" piece of plywood at roughly 17" long. Attach 2
125 lb rated plastic swivel wheels. (you may want something more substantial
than plastic wheels. You may also want to add a cross member at rear to ends
of rails.) The wheels I bought were ~ 2.5" from bottom of wheel to top of
plate. Whatever you use for material, just make sure you make it so jack
will slide out once dolly is on the ground.

Deck:

I think it was 18.5" x 15" but for sure is 3/4" plywood. I sized it to
support engine and IIRC, the carrier bar (aka load bar) but for sure not the
exhaust header. I positioned it on rails as such.

Here's how I used mine.

With van still on the ground, I put dolly and jack under engine and jacked
up dolly to support the engine. I supported the tranny, and removed the
mount and plate it attaches to from frame and tranny. I removed the
fasteners from the engine carrier, and lowered the engine/dolly to the
ground. Then I snuck the jack back to the tranny mount point on frame,
(there's room with other parts removed) jacked up the van, put some jack
stands in there for safety, then I removed the bolts and nuts holding engine
to tranny, wiggled the engine off the tranny, and with some fenaggling, it
rolled out nicely!

I had removed some parts from the engine, so you may find there's not enough
lift on your jack to make this possible. Even so, you could add wood to your
jack. As it was, I had to uh, persuade the sheet metal under bumper so the
tower thingy (crankcase breather??) would clear. The body on this van is
scrap so I didn't care. Again, YMMV.

The best part is I can roll the engine out to my other van, get the jack
under the dolly again, and with any luck lift it up level with the van and
slide it in!

Heh heh.

This design is not HD, but should suffice for limited use. I'd recommend
using heftier rubber wheels and adding a cross member at rear to ends of
2x4.

I'll post a pic tomorrow. It's too dark right now.

Cheers,

Neil.

--
Neil Nicholson. 1981 Air Cooled Westfalia -
"Jaco"  (Bustorius) http://web.mac.com/tubaneil

Engine swap beginings: http://musomuso.googlepages.com/home