I have a 89 SR5 just had a motor built (3.0) high comp. pistons,doa cams,port/polished heads,downey intake work and tb,downey headers,jacobs pro street,msd 8.5's, denso irid's, and homemade intake pipe and also put on electric fan...............but anyway. So i got the truck almost put back together, as i went to put the top hat (intake) on i picked it up low and behold there was the plate that go's between the bell housing and the block . I put the lower one on but forgot all about this one. What a lot of work to either take the tranny off or the engine back out. Just wondering if i took the lower plate off and bolted the tranny back up if there would be any problems.............the only thing i could really think is that the starter wouldn't mesh up right..or also afraid of tearing up the tranny or the rear main seal...Any help would be great

 

I am not sure exactly what plate you are talking about, but I would think that you should probably put it back on. After doing all of that work, you do not want some little thing to wreck something, like the rear seal. It seems that removing the transmission would be easier than the engine.

 

Without that plate in there the input shaft for your tranny will probably press too hard on the pilot bearing and something will fail sooner than it should, and leaving the lower dust cover off will likely contaminate your clutch and make it fail too soon. You should pull the tranny and install the plate.