[rotorwrench]

I used to avoid working on automatic transmissions until I got tired of having problems with them after other folks worked on them for me. Any good mechanic can figure out what makes an individual design work but they are somewhat complex until you study how each one works through all of it's functional operations. The later ones are easy and very few of them have replacement part problems but the old ones are in a different category. I say this because some parts are no longer available so they had to be replaced with other parts that aren't quite the same. This makes for mysteries that a mechanic can't find in any manual to correct. It's either trial and error or ask an old timer. It's getting this way for near all of the automatic transmissions that were made prior to 1962.

Given the choice of pulling the whole engine/trans, I would take the easier route and pull the valve body and transfer tube to remove the tail housing. It would makes things a LOT easier. There is also less chance of damaging paint or other things.