Today, for some unknown reason, I decided to go look and see if High Sierra 2500's picture garage had any cool pictures of the work he's done on his truck. While reading his comments about the transmission rebuild, I realized I might be able to help some of you guys who want to rebuild/play with your transmission's internals in the future.

One of his comments is "Does anybody know how to drop a pan without making a mess?" Well, maybe.

If anyone has tried to change the oil on an inboard/outboard boat engine, you've probably had the same problem. You can't get to the oil drain plug without pulling the engine. I don't have a cherry picker at all, much less one for a boat. Most people don't, and since changing the oil is "supposed" to be rather easy, even owners can do it without taking it in to their service dept.

So, to help the boat owner out, someone developed an oil pump with a flexible plastic tube that goes down the oil dipstick tube. It sucks out most of the engine oil and deposits it out another tube and into a suitable container (hopefully). Also, the pump is electric and usually has two aligator clips to connect to..... a 12v battery. If only we had one or two of those batteries somewhere near the AT dipstick tube...;)

I'm thinking y'all can use one of these little electric pumps to "drain" most of the AT fluid before removing the pan. Assuming the dipstick tube is of sufficient diameter for the plastic pump tube to fit inside. That way, less oil gets everywhere, and I think you'd have a much smaller mess (as far as AT fluid mess is concerned).

After you drain and drop the AT pan the first time, you may be able to install a drain plug/fumoto type fitting before reinstallation. I don't know how involved that is, but it would help with subsequent maintenance/oil changes.

I hope that helps. And I suppose this goes for just about any transmission. Soooo, the mods are probably going to move it. Whatever.

Good luck!

did a similar thing when I accidently over filled mine, used an electric fuel pump and a length of copper fuel line, worked a treat to suck out half a quart so should have sucked out most of it if needed.

using a pump is a great way to get most of the fluid out. the best thing is to have a tranny pan with a drain plug, but your gonna have to remove the stock pan anyways to do this so using the pump would still be a good idea.

That's funny you should mention that. I recently purchased a boat and came across one of those pumps in the marine section at the local supermarket... Looked like it could be useful. Don't need it for my boat (it's got a two stroke 65 hp outboard) so I wasn't quite sure what for, but it looked handy. Excellent idea! I've been working on somebody else's 700R4 lately and that certainly would help. I'll have to investigate that.

By the way, I'm probably going to be adding some new pics to my garage in the fairly near future. ;)

Cool! I look forward to checking those new pics out. Keep up the good work! ;)

Those pumps work just fine.

I add a drain plug to all my trans pans, especially my turbo mini as I have to do alot of tranny work to help it live and I use expensive synthetic oil. This way, I can drain it, drop the pan, do the valve body work or whatever and reuse the oil. :D