01 Surburban Transmission Pan

[oldcycler]

I did the 50,000 mile transmission service on my 01 Suburban the other day and ran into a lot of trouble. I drained the fluid through the plug, removed the heat shield and shift linkage and removed the pan bolts. This is where the problems began. The pan would not clear the exhaust pipe. The left exhaust pipe crosses to and joins the right pipe at the rear of the transmission. The pan would not clear the pipe. There are some electical connectors and some sort of selinoid (I think) that hang down so the pan you can't move the pan forward and down away from the transmission.

I was able to change the filter and clean the surfaces with with resulting gap but could not take the pan completely off to do a good cleaning. It was also quite a pain in the butt to get the new gasket put into place.

Does anyone know how to get the pan off with out disconecting the exhaust pipe from the manifold?

[cochran63]

on mine I loosened the transmission mount nut and raised the tranny with a jack and the pan came off. Too bad I found this out after damaging a shift solenoid....

[oldcycler]

Thanks. I'll try that next time. I did not mention it before but in the process of trying to get the pan off I disconnected a couple of molex connectors (moving the pan around to try to get it off) . It took me about an hour to figure out how to correctly connect them back up.

I used to think that Ford engineering was the worst in the world but now I'm beginning to think that GM takes the lead.

Too bad everything is not as easy as my 67.

I just bought a 06 Sierra. Maybe I should sell it before the transmission needs service.

[cochran63]

lol... I never serviced mine until 150,000 and 3k later the tranny went out. On the other hand my father changes his every 20k had his tranny fail at 170k in the same truck as mine except his is a chevy and mine is a GMC