I ran across this post on the switching out the internal thermostat.

If you remove your 2 engine mount bolts, CD box wires and loosen the shift coupler you can lower the motor a good 4" to get to this area with the motor in the car, their is no way I think you could do it without lowering the motor its way too tight and you can't see back there along with the fact the thermostat is about 3.5 inches long and it will get stuck back their somewhere .

Does this sound right. I know many of you may question why not just go ahead and drop the engine. You don't know my luck. If it can go wrong it will go wrong. Bottom line is all I want to do is to replace my thermostat and oil pressure sender with the least amount of dis assembly.

Nothing wrong with the suggestion...question is will it give you enough space to work. Make sure you have a jack supporting the motor at the rear when you remove the bolts, or you will do quite a bit of damage. It will take about ten minutes to find out if you have enough space to work, so I'd say this is worth a try.

No you have to drop your motor all the way to measure up to the other Randy's on the bbs. If they suffered, then you have to suffer.

Now Randy that's not fair. I believe I will go through with the steps to do a partial drop.
battery
drain oil
heater duct hoses
shift coupler
fuel lines and connections
and see if just dropping the engine down a few inches will give me enough room. If not I'll unbolt the tranny and try to slide it out a little. I'll be working by myself ,that's one reason I wanted to do as little as possible.

Randy, you're making this too difficult. You don't need to do any of that to drop the engine four or five inches. I let mine down 6" once without undoing anything. But don't go much farther. If this doesn't work, buckle it back up and start your full drop.

I was hoping you were going to say that. I'm going to look at it now.
Thanks for all the help.

definitely have help for your first complete engine removal.

Randy Cecale might be willing to visit 'up Nawth' where you live to help. If not, you could recruit another randy person.