How to Replace Oil Pan 2000-06 Chevy Tahoe

Start by disconnecting the battery, disconnect the negative terminal using an 8-millimeter wrench. Loosen this up. Take it off and set it aside. Now I'm gonna drain the oil use a 13-millimeter wrench, sometimes it's a 15-millimeter wrench, and take the drain plug out. Make sure you have a drain bucket below to catch the oil. The oil is drained out, put the drain plug back in and snug it down. Now I'm gonna remove the level sensor. You're gonna use a pick, preferably a hook-style pick like this, or even a 90-degree pick will work. And then just try to get underneath the clip of where the connector is, just pull up and disconnect the connector so what you're doing with the pick is trying to get under there and just lift up just slightly, you don't want to crack it, and disconnect that. Now use a 1-1/8 socket and just loosen that. Once you crack it free, you should be able to spin it by hand, take that off and it looks like the o-ring got stuck to the side of the oil pan, take that off, and just slide it up.

Now, if you have a shield that goes right here, you're gonna wanna take those bolts out right there and right there, take that down out of the way. This vehicle doesn't have that. Now I wanna take this cross member down. Use an 18-millimeter wrench on the back right here on the nut, and then on the bolt, 18-millimeter socket, take this out and I'll do the same on this one. Before I take those bolts out completely, there's two bolts right here with nuts on top. Do the same 18-millimeter wrench and 18-millimeter socket.

Now just support the cross member and pull those out and just slide it down. Now we're gonna take off the front driveshaft. Before I do that, I just wanna mark it from the front yoke, just take a marker or a pen. This way I can put it back together the way it came apart just to avoid any unnecessary vibrations that you could cause. I'll use a 11-millimeter socket, or you can use a wrench. Take these caps off, twist it, and then get these ones off. Before I slide the driveshaft out, there is a clamp that goes right here, you're gonna wanna take that clamp off. It looks just like this one you can either cut it off or just try to jam a screwdriver in there and pry it off. When you go to put it back together, you could use a tie wrap or a wire tie to put back in that position. So, this one doesn't have that so I'm all set. I'll just take a pry bar, pry back and just be careful, you don't want these caps to fall off. Just wiggle this back and forth a little bit, slide it down, then you can slide this forward. I'll just pry this boot back a little bit. And just slide the shaft out.

I'm gonna need to remove these front axle bolts. Before I do that, I'll just again, mark this just to put it back to how it was when I took it apart. There we go. Now I'll take these bolts out, use a 15-millimeter socket. You can rotate this and take that out, and you can just grab this and move it to the side, You can do the same on the other one. Now disconnect the electrical connector. You can use a pick tool or a screwdriver. Slide the lock up and slide it back and disconnect this wire clip right here, slide that out. And there's another one further up. Just move the wire out of the way.

And there's another one way up top. It's kinda hard to see, you just kinda have to do it by feel. And that's all disconnected. Because this steering bar is gonna be in my way, I need to turn the wheel all the way to the left. So you could turn the steering wheel to the left or just grab the wheel and turn it. All right. And now, because I'm doing this by myself, I am gonna use a transmission jack just to support the front axle. Just get underneath here, just like that. And I'm gonna take this bolt out up top here. Let's start with that one. And there's a nut on the backside of here. All right. Take a 21-millimeter socket and a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut and take this off, and get the nut off.

And now I can take the bolt out. Just slide it out. Just like that. And I'll take this bolt out right here, the same 21-millimeter socket and 21-millimeter wrench. Take that out. There we go. Now I'll take these two nuts off, use a 21-millimeter socket. There should be a washer there as well, take this nut off as well. Now, this is completely disconnected. I can lower down the transmission jack a little bit. Just try to get this by the axle. And you kinda gotta tip this up a little and twist it. There we go. Now this area has to get past that steering shaft. Just tip it up. And I'm just using the transmission jack just to prevent it from falling to the ground. In some cases that you can get this past the steering shaft, it's given us a little bit of trouble, so I'm actually gonna take the idler arm out so that I can move the shaft out of the way and then we can drop this down a lot easier. I'm just gonna take these two bolts out and there's nuts on the backside and use a 21-millimeter wrench on the back, and then a 21-millimeter socket on the front. And slide those out. You might have to turn the wheel back a little bit.

Just be careful not to crush the front differential because it is still in that position. Just slide this out, watch out for those transmission lines. That's good. We'll slide this forward. Now hopefully that gave us enough room. Just tip this down. There we go. Just twist it a little bit. Slide it down and you want to tip the back of it up. Now there's a breather hose right there and don't forget to disconnect that. And just slide it down. The wires go through this bracket right here, this plastic bracket, and there's a bolt that goes right here. Use a 10-millimeter socket, take that bolt out. And grab this bracket and just slide it towards the driver side. There's a little pin right there. It comes out and just stays like that.

There's a bracket right here that holds the transmission coolant lines and the two wiring harnesses and you can take out the bolt. It's a 10-millimeter socket I'm gonna use. Take that off there and then this is loose. And this little cover that covers the bell housing is a 10-millimeter bolt right there, take that out. And this is loose. And on the other side of this bracket right here, just take this out. Use the same 10-millimeter socket, slide that off. And if you have oil cooler lines, if your vehicle has oil cooler lines, you're gonna wanna take those off. This vehicle does not. Now, all along the perimeter of the oil pan, you're gonna take these bolts out, there's two in the front there. You're gonna use the same 10-millimeter socket. And then right here, here, back here, there's a hidden one back here, another one here, and here, and up there, and some behind here as well, so take all those out.

And there's two bolts that go into the back of the oil pan right here. Use a 15-millimeter socket, take those off. And you might want to support the oil pan when you take those out. Now, some of the oil's leaking out as well. You should have a drain pan underneath here because we didn't take the oil filter off yet. And just slide this down, slide it out. Now take some brake parts cleaner and just clean all this surface area. You can take a scraper if some of the buildup seems kinda high or a razor blade. Just be careful, you don't want to gouge the metal. Now, if you're reusing the oil pan, you're gonna wanna take this gasket off. They are riveted down from the factory so if it's never been replaced before, you're gonna have to drill these rivets out. So there's one there and one there, and that's just for assembly from the factory. So you don't have to put those rivets back in, just make sure you clean up all the shavings that fall in there. And then clean up the pan just like we cleaned up on the engine with either a razor blade or a scraper and some brake parts cleaner and a rag.

Now, take the new oil pan gasket and just line it up, just like that. Now there's a couple of sections where the case splits where the front cover and rear cover split on the engine and it's a good idea to take a little bit of RTV and do a little dab right here. Probably a little less than that would be good. And then over here, there's these little hash marks right there, and right there. And that's just gonna help it seal where there was a case halves meet or where those covers meet and just slide it in position.

Now I'll just get a couple of bolts started. And now, I'm gonna start snugging these bolts up before I torque them. And put these two lower bell housing bolts in and snug those up. Now I'm gonna use a torque wrench and torque all these bolts and the front cover bolts these two to 18 foot-pounds. And then after that, we have to torque these to a different torque so start with these ones. I'll just start in the middle and work my way out. And these two rear bolts for the oil pan, the longer ones, those you're gonna torque those to 106 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. And torque these two lower bell housing bolts to 37 foot-pounds. Now with this cover, we can put the bolt that goes right there and snug that down. Just snug it up and this cover on the driver side and put the bolt in and snug it up.

Now this transmission cooler line bracket, line this up and take the bolt, get the bolt in. And get that started and tighten it down. And this front wiring bracket, there's a pin right here that's gonna slide into the oil pan. Just slide over, just like that. And take this bolt, put this bolt in here and tighten it down. All right.

Now we're gonna install the front differential. I am using a transmission jack to help support it. There we go. All right. Hard part's over. All right. Now I'm just gonna try to get all the mounts lined up. All right. This is lined up. You can put those nuts on right here. There's washers and nuts, washer on and the nut. Just leave these loose, you can torque these later. And take these bolts, just line this up and put the nut on. And then this mount I'm gonna have to lower this down a little bit, just get that lined up. Oops. And slide the bolt through there and the nut on the backside. Now we're gonna tighten this bolt down, use a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut, and if you have the ability to torque this, torque this to 75 foot-pounds. Oops. And this bolt as well, 75 foot-pounds.

And then tighten these two nuts. Now you can torque these nuts to 67 foot-pounds. We can hook up the wiring harness just to line this up. Plug this connector in and then where the wire retainers are, just hook those, the wire into those and lock those down, right there. And then there's another one up here, and then there's another one way further up. And hook this vent hose up. That should be good. Now, line up the front CV shafts and put the bolts back in. I'm just gonna hold the rotor with the pry bar with the axle from spinning, and then torque these to 58 foot-pounds. Then you're gonna do the same on the other one. Now take the front driveshaft and just slide it over that cross member and the exhaust and slide it into the transfer case and push that boot on there. And then slide the front U-joint into the yoke and try to line it up with your marks. And put these caps on.

Now I'm just gonna use a pry bar to prevent the driveshaft from spinning and torque these bolts to 18 foot-pounds. Now you should get a clamp that goes on here pretty much like the clamp that came off of there, there's a metal clamp or some people actually use a wire tie on that, that works as well. And we'll take the idler arm and get that lined back up. Get that back in position. And put the bolts and the nuts back on and torque these bolts to 73 foot-pounds. Make sure you have a wrench on that nut. All right. Take this cross member and slide it up into position and take the bolts, two longer ones go up here, two shorter ones go over here. Put the nuts on top. Put the nuts on the front and tighten all these bolts down. And just double-check to make sure the drain plug's tight, snug it up.

And now, I'm just gonna prime the filter with engine oil. Just make sure you use the correct oil. Try to get it in that center hole and just make sure you get oil on the ring of the seal, and that's good. Now we'll install the filter, line that up. And then once it's snug go about another quarter turn, that's good. And take the level sensor and carefully slide it in the hole. Then you can torque this to 115 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. And take the plug, line it up, plug it back in. And now, we can put the appropriate oil in. Use a funnel. All right. Put the cap back on. Now hook the battery up and tighten down the terminal, just snug it up. Make sure you wiggle it, make sure it's not loose.

Now when you first start the vehicle, you want to take a look at this oil pressure gauge and just make sure that comes up fairly quickly. So, this is the first time starting. Just watch that gauge and it came up pretty quickly. Now because we disconnected the steering idler arm, it would be a good idea to have the vehicle aligned after you're done.