I am replacing my TC soon and would like to know what to expect.

1. Can I leave the trans in the tunnel and just slide it back a foot?

2. Do I get to all the flexplate bolts by spinning the motor or can you get to all of them without doing that?

3. Around how many hours does it take someone doing it the first time?

I just change my turbo/manifold last weekend, and did the valve body about a month ago. I am thinking this is actually more straightforeward than either of them. I hated doing the vb. The turbo wasnt too bad.

Any tips or tricks are appreciated!

 

Don't know your particular rig, but I just did one in a 95 2wd by myself in 8 hrs in the driveway with caveman tools. Hardest part was finding enough cribbing to put the truck on safely to get under it. (two wheel drives are short) All the flex-plate bolts had to come outta a little hole frome engine side and had to rotate engine. All in all it wasn't bad, just took time.

 

Also i found it alot easier to put the tranny on the ground rather than slide it back. Don't know if you could slide it back far enough anyway.

 

Excellent, thanks for the info. I have a 2006. Hopefully I can do it in 8 hours, I would be happy with that.

 

I haven't pulled a tranny on one of these trucks berfore but I have many others. The biggest obstacle is the weight of the tranny and getting it out safely without it hitting the floor by accident. It's gonna be heavy. I have comtemplated upgrading my tranny and to me this is the biggest obstacle doing it without any bo-bo's.

With a lift and a tranny jack I would do one in a heartbeat. On the ground, Hmmmm, don't know the answer to that one.

 

One more thing. If you don't have a place to do it like I don't, just go buy 2 sheets of 9\16" OSB at home depot and slide em under the truck so your jack will roll, then use them later to build a doghouse or whatever. I also do not have a tranny jack or tranny cradle attachment for my floor jack, but it works fine as is.

 

I think it would be much easier to drop the tranny than to try and move it back far enough. These trannies aren't really that heavy with all the fluid drained out, the torque converter removed and the transfer case off, not much left.

If you decide to do it, a couple of things: take good note of how far the stock TC fits into the front pump by looking at the engine side of the TC and it's relation to the bell housing. Secondly, of course don't forget to fill the TC with tranny fluid before you put it in. Fill it up and stand it on end to run out any excess fluid into a container.

good luck.... should be pretty easy actually.

 

To get to the bolts that hold the TC to the flexplate, you can get a little pry bar and move the flexplate with that until the bolts show up in the window on the front passenger side. There's a little arrow on the flexplate as seen from the bottom that indicates the bolt is in the window.

I hope you're going to put in a stronger flexplate after all that effort!

 

that's a good call on the flexplate as well. I know the flexplates in these trucks are suspect with the diesel torque, and I think firmer shifts could exacerbate the potential problem. There is probably a pretty wide range of what each individual stock flexplate will hold before failure, but there is no way to find out till it's too late. I guess the other side of the coin is that if you did lose a flexplate it would likely not do much damage to anything else. So I guess you could play Devil's advocate all day long on this one.

There are some pretty exotic ones out there that carry an exotic price tag, but there are some other options as well that would be plenty strong for this application, such as laminated steel. I think billet would be an over kill and I think they cost around 500 bucks. The laminated I think are less than 3....but not sure on the prices.