My friend has an 05 cavalier and long story short the motor is junk and I sourced one for a good price. I was searching into the process of removing the motor from one of these cars and multiple times heard that you had to remove the subframe to drop the motor out from underneath the car, is this true? And if so would removing the exhaust & intake manifolds and/or seperating the trans from the motor help with clearance?

Cheers.

 

I had a Cav with the 2.2 liter. Never removed the motor, but from my recollection, there is no reason you couldn't pull the motor out vertically from the top.