My 1987 4x4 van has 234,000 miles and is leaking oil, burning oil, leaking from a cracked exhaust manifold and so i'm replacing it with a lower mileage engine instead of redoing the whole thing. so my questions' :

I can't find how to disconnect the tranny from the motor?
The manual says to lower them both out the bottom together which i will do but i wanted to leave the tranny alone and take the motor up and out.
maybe i'll just start taking one thing off at a time(and labeling) until there's nothing left.
i'm going to replace the hose of death while i have the neused motor out and what else should i replace? motor mounts? water pump will be replaced too.
does anyone in the portland area have an engine hoist i could borrow for a month(that's quite a while isn't it)?
thanks everybody, aaron.