how hard is it to change the rear main and pan gasket on a 87 302 I got a the 4 speed standard tranny do I gotta pull the motor to drop the pan?

 

You might as well pull the motor. You have to pull either the engine or tranny to change the rear main.

 

Its a pain in the ***. You don't have to pull the engine, but you have to raise it. Remove tranny mount bolts, motor mount bolts, remove intake manifold, raise engine. Now you are thinking where do I raise engine from if I am taking the oil pan off? The answer is if you have no hoist then by the harmonic balancer very carefully or raise it from the pan and put wood blocks under motor mounts. Now.......The exhaust runs right under the pan. You either have to cut it or remove the exhaust on that side (you will see what I mean). When you do it by the raise the engine method you will not have much clearance. You will be forced to slip your hands in the pan and remove the pickup at least (maybe pump too) before pan will come free because the pickup runs so low toward the bottom of pan. Drop pickup in pan and maybe pump too then pull off pan. Its a royal pain in the ***. Get a few beers on tap for this one.

What I did was raise the sumbitch good and high by the harmonic balancer and did what I said. You may want to consider changing pump and pickup just cause its such a pain to get them if they go bad later.

 

Our posts crossed.....Yes, if you want to do rear main you have to pull engine or tranny. I went tranny route on that one. That's a real pain too....

 

damn I was afraid of that but I gotta do it I put a quart of oil every other day and yeah I will change the pickup and pump while I got it torn apart

 

The 302 had a bad problem of premature oil pan gasket failure right at the rear of pan that really looks like rear main. Make sure, but then again going through all that work may as well get rear main. Get this.....I once got an oil leak as bad as yours. Was coming from between tranny and engine. Thought rear main. No problem...set aside some time and got her done. Started her up only to have same leak. I starred at the truck for 5 minutes with the death stare and a sledge. Ended up doing pan few weeks later. The oil leaks on these things are truly fun stuff.