I did it. Completed the job.
The things that I THOUGHT were going to be difficult were not difficult. Not at all. The things I least expected to be difficult, were difficult.
1. The fill plug uses a 8mm hex allen head. On top of that, it's a stubby; there's no space to get in there with a ratchet unless you have the stubby bit, which I didn't have.
2. Taking off the jiffy type connector for the cooling hose on the radiator was much harder than I thought because the awkward positioning.
3. The fill plug was sealed shut with pipe dope and loctite. From the factory.
Doing the fluid exchange was easy but time consuming, because I had to drain 2 quarts, fill 2 quarts (from below). Thankfully I foresaw this and had a pump so pumping new fluid into the transmission was easy. I did the exchange until it ran cherry red (but not bright cherry red yet, because I had to save fluid).
Now, the part that I was expecting to have much trouble? DROPPING THE PAN.
Except, the trouble never materialized. I drained all the fluid so there was no spillage, disconnected everything, took all the screws out, lowered the pan, angled it to the right (toward the passenger side), and the pan DROPPED RIGHT OUT. No fuss, no problem, nothing at all. No jacking the exhaust pipe, lowering it, disconnecting transmission bolts, nothing. Took me less than a minute to get the pan out once I had all the screws out and it lowered. I'm not even exaggerating.
I'm even let down because I thought the transmission pan would put up much more of a fight. After all, everyone is complaining about it the most. It posed zero obstacle to me whatsoever.
Once I had it open, I changed the filter, cleaned the pan/magnets, buttoned everything back up, filled it back up with 4 quarts, went through the fluid level check procedure, and I was done. I did run into difficulty with the fluid check procedure. My truck does have a fluid check plug. But even at 167-176F, even after filling (and overfilling slightly), none to only slightly few drips came out the fluid check plug, but wanted to come out the fill plug instead. I had to end up using 1.75 extra quarts. I believe it might be different for this truck, in that it uses the fill plug for fluid check. Even still, at 167-176F, a few drips came out of the fluid check plug, but that's it. I went with it.
Tightened everything down, ensured no leaks, took for test drive, and was amazed at the smoothness of shifting. It's almost like when I first bought my truck.
The old transmission fluid was black, and stunk. There was no metal in the fluid, nor in the pan (other than a tiny bit of fuzz on the magnets, which is typical). It looked like normal transmission maintenance.
Job took me 12 hours, but that's because I took my time to ensure everything was done to the letter. I'm happy.