I just did this last week on an 87 300e. I have a lift in my garage which made it easier. It is pretty straight forward overall. You don't need to do anything to the front of the engine. The hardest part is getting the two top bolts out. First I disconnected the torque convertor, tranny cooling lines, speedo cable, neutral safety switch wire, backup light, etc. from below the car. From above you need to remove the kickdown cable from the throttle assembly, and the vacum line to the modulator. These will both stay with the tranny. From the rear you need to get the driveshaft out of the way. My exhaust was off at the time for repair as well so this was easy. Next I loosened and removed all the bolts that were easy to get at but left the bottom ones in. I then removed the rear cross member while supporting the tranny. Once the crossmember was out I lowered the tranny so that the whole engine/tranny combo hung at an angle. The rear of the tranny dropped about 6 to 8 inches. This gave me the room to get a very long extension and universal onto the upper bolts all the way from the rear of the tranny. Once they were out I raised the tranny back to level and put two milk crates (stacked) under the tranny. I then removed the final 2 lower bolts and slid the tranny straight back. Once it was clear of the engine I raided the car out of the way.