Takes me much less time to pull a cab than a motor. Dealing with the tranny is the most time consuming part in engine removal IMO.
To remove the cab it is very simple and straightforward. i dont know if gm designed it this way or not.
Remove tires and liners and put hood in service position because it gives you soo much more light. Tires dont haver to come off but it gives you soo much more room to work.
Remove grille, and upper shrouds.
Remove bumper(not needed to remove the cab but you will want it out of your way when working on the motor and its nice to have it out of the way for a couple things for removing the cab)
Disconnect transcooler lines that go to transmission, radiator hoses and CAC tubes and dont forget the heater hoses.
Swing A/C compressor up onto passenger sid ebattery.
Unplug main engine bale connectors, glow plug power feed, alternator wires, a/cwires, coolant resevoir wires and swing to the drivers side
disconnect the batterys and leave the wires with the frame
disconnect the small wire that goes to the starter solenoid and fish it over to the drivers side unhooking it along the way
unbolt the grounds on the drivers side that will go up with the cab, I cant think of which ones do or dont or if they all don or all dont but I thought some had to be taken off. Drivers side will be fine all of those grounds stay.
Disconnect parking brake cable and shifting linkage.
Disconnect grounds. The one to the cab, one to the frame by the drivers side (on one of the cab mounts), one up on the radiator mount on the frame on the drivers side. And I may be missing one.
Now you are getting close.
Disconnect all of the wires from the transmissiona nd let them go up with the cab. The rest of the wires(t case, abs, rear lights and trailer plug) you will disconnect at the fuse box. To do this remove the fender support, then remove fuse box cover, then unfasten fuse block and simply trace your wires then unhook them and/or unbolt them from the block, then fish them out of the way so they will not snag.
Unbolt master cyllinder as ben stated
Undo powersteering lines
undo all of your aftermarket accesories tieing the chassis to the cab. This is where you get pissed at yourself for not thinking of removing the cab when you ran those 10,000 wires throught the firewall.
Now unbolt the cab and dont forget to unbolt the radiator stack as well.
Put the tires back on with a couple nuts.
Position your lift arms under the cab. This is where rotary lifts dont shine. The other ones with the pads work nicer but the rotary style pads are just fine however you will want a set of truck extensions in order to reach the cab floor or you will need to block the cab up a bit with some 2x4s or something.
Now slowly lift the cab up while checking for things you forgot to unhook or things that are catching. It helps to have somebody with an IQ of 10 or greater to push the up button for you at this point. But if you have no friends you can do it yourself, ive always managed.
Now with the cab in teh air and free, roll the truck forward to a desireable position and thenl lift the frontend in the air with a floor jack, remove the front tires, then set it down low on jackstands at a desireable working height and begin your surgery,
I would make a writeup or DIY, but dont have trucks coming in here left and right needing the cab off
But next time hopefully Ill take pictures. Ive done this three times and ive pulled the motor 3 times and find cab removal much nicer if it fits the situation. much nicer than fighting torque converter bolts. But its just my opinion. I remove the cab for HGs no questions asked. Turbo is iffy. Depends on how much it pisses me off. but pulling the cab is a lot of work for just the turbo, but if the bolts wont break loose, off it comes.
