I am going to be replacing my transmission in my 03 LS. Does anyone know if its easier to take the engine and transmission out together, or just the transmission by itself?

 

I'm not so sure you can even take out the transmission by itself, if you do its going to not be very easy. I would suggest dropping the subframe and going from there.

 

Definitely need to drop the cradle to access

 

I was reading in my Haynes manual about taking the transmission out and it seemed really overly complicated compared to other transmissions I've pulled. That's what made me wonder if it would just be easier to pull the whole thing engine and all.

 

They aren't too hard to remove the engine from the top. But you'll have to drain a lot of your fluids that way.

 

Does anyone know if there's a difference between the transmissions in a 3400 car and a 3800 car? Are they interchangeable? I know the l67's have a different transmission. But will a transmission from a naturally aspirated 3800 work in a car with a 3400?

 

The gear ratio is different

Just find another tranny from a 3400, and pull everything out of the top. You COULD do it from underneath and drop just the tranny but it's MUCH easier having everything out in the open. Especially where the bolt is on the back of the engine/tranny

 

Thanks for the info. I'm not totally sure what I am going to do. If I'm going to pull the engine and transmission to replace the tranny, I'd like to do a 3800 swap. Just not sure what I want to do.

 

the 3400 and the 3800 have diff trany's i still think the 3400 has a 4t60e and the 3800's have the 4t65e's

 

Whatever transmission is with the 3400, it sucks. I've had GM transmissions with 250,000 miles on them that still run like new. This one only has 109,000 on it and it's just about shot.