Need advice for a 3.0 motor swap

I'm in the middle of swapping the broken 3VZ-E motor out of my '95 4x4 pickup for a remanufactured one. The service manual says it should be possible to lift the engine and transmission vertically through the engine compartment in once piece, but when I tried it, there wasn't clearance to tip the engine upright in the engine compartment.

I gave up and removed the tranny from underneath and was able to get it all out, but when I put it back together, I would like to drop the engine and tranny together. My friends seem to think it will be easier if it's possible. Has anyone ever removed a 3VZE and tranny in one piece?

Is it possible to remove the cross-brace at the front of the engine compartment without taking apart half of the body? I can't find any documentation on that, and I hesitate to just start pulling the body apart until I know how far down that road I'm going to have to go. It looks to me like at least the two front quarter panels will interfere if I start down that road.

I would love to hear from anyone who has done this before.