Day 1
We arrived at 8 and immediately set into work. Raised the front of the car up on jacks, front wheels off and took out all the front suspension both sides and strapped the calipers up with cable ties. Removed the plastic guard and drained the tranny oil (surprisingly still a fair bit in it, I thought it had leaked it all out... Its also surprisingly red!). Also disconnected the power steering lines and drained those out.
Unbolted the engine mounts and dropped the subframe out the bottom, leaving the engine hanging from the top. Got under the car, unbolted all the angle gear bolts and the lower transmission bolts. Got the starter motor out, the torque converter bolts out and we removed the rest of the transmission bolts.
The transmission basically came off by itself. We used a wheel rim & tyre to "cup" the transmission, with a car jack on the other side, and lowered it to the ground, where we can slide it around. Haven't exactly planned how Im going to get the manual in there but we'll figure that out.
We had the transmission out by about 3pm, including a 1 hour lunch break, so not a bad innings, especially as last time it took 2 days. Our schedule allowed us to have the transmission out by the end of day 1 (the end being about 6-7pm). So we had some time to kill, decided Id also remove the pedal box. That proved to be a nightmare.
In reality it is probably a lot easier to remove the dash than to try do it with the dash in, but I decided to leave it in and work with the tiny space I had. All in all, good days work and we're pretty ahead of schedule at this rate. Tomorrow will see flex plate out, and flywheel/clutch in, some wiring done and the shifter done I think.