At 67, I tried to do the chest lift. Kept bumping the friction plate with the input shaft. Clutch linkage was out of the car. My power lifter neighbor comes by and tells me to get out of the way. He holds up my 4 sp with one hand and depresses the clutch fork with his other hand and slides in the trans. Comes out from under the car with neck veins bulging and says, “Hey- that was a good one!” Next time I’m applying what I learned here.
At your age (I’m behind you several years but I’m over 60) you’ve EARNED a floor jack.
It’s near impossible (for me) to get the gearbox on the little pad of the jack, slide it under the car, get my fat *** on the ground, slide under the car all to try and keep the gearbox on the jack, line it up, slide it around, line it up again, raise the jack, have the gearbox damn near slide off the jack, swear like a truck driver for 5 minutes, get it all lined up again, raise the jack, slide the jack forward, repeat the falling off but I save it and start over again. Repeat this several times until I get the box in the right position.
Then I finally get the box up in there, slide it in real careful like and DOINK, I knock the throw out bearing off.
Repeat the above.
After an hour or so I get it in.
I looked at several transmission jacks but all of them were designed for cars on lifts. Too tall to set the gearbox on there and slide it under the car.
I made an ugly yet functional plate the gearbox sits on. I use the reverse stud to hold the box to the plate.
It now takes me about 20 minutes start to finish now.
I do feel your pain.
