Need transmission replaced, anyone done this somewhere other than dealer?

[mountie]

May I suggest...... Find a GOOD LOCAL transmission troubleshooter..... You may have a simple defective component , causing CRAZY issues.... ( I had a problem with my older truck, and it was just a leaky vacuum line)..... Cost 2 dollars to cure....

1st thing to check is if the fluid smells burnt. Also consider the torque converter??

 

[easymoney]

Transmission is going out on my '15 Tahoe LTZ and I'm starting to research replacement options. Talked with a mechanic buddy of mine today who agreed that it's going and needs to be replaced. He did his own on his '03 Avalanche and said he would help me if I wanted to do it myself. He suggested I research and call around to get some prices on a remanufactured transmission with/without labor to determine if we should attempt it. Has anyone done it themselves or bought a transmission and taken it to a shop to have it installed? Any info appreciated.

Also in some of my research I've read about several reprogrammings that need to happen after replacement, so I'm not even sure if this is something that we can do since we don't have the tools required to perform whatever reprogramming needs to happen.

 

[easymoney]

I just went through this on my 2004 tahoe. I had a 99 that i swapped the transmission out on quite a few years ago My dad has a shop and a lift so we did it. It takes most of the day but not horrible. If you dont have a lift you can still do it but its more of a hassle. For my 2004 z71 i looked around and just paid a transmission shop to do it. I decided to go with a remanufactured instead of a rebuild because transmission are complicated and there is so many things that can go wrong. If you go the cheaper route “rebuild” they will pull it apart and replace the things they can see that are wrong. The remanufactured is more of a complete job. The servos and any part that wears out are replaced with new even if they look ok which is different than the “rebuild”. Sometimes you test a part and it could be going out and you just cant tell by testing it. This is bad because the parts are not very expensive most of the work is getting transmission out and in the vehicle. For the cheap rebuild it was $2200 and for a remanufactured was $3400. The remanufactured i chose is quite a bit more expensive but is done in a gm certified factory and came with a 3yr 100k warranty fixing the gm known factory issues. I plan on driving my tahoe for many years and new tahoes are so expensive i think it was worth it to get more quality and reliability. Gm transmissions are good but wear out faster than other brands for some reason i almost think its intentionally. They knew about the sunshell for many years and refused to upgrade it with a $50 part that would never fail.

what i would recommend for you is go to a transmission shop not just an all in one general shop. They will just put someone elses rebuild in there. If they do all the work themselves they will be more likely to fix it right since they dont want you back. You want someone that knows what their doing. I dont know much about the weakness of a 8l90 but the 4l60 had several failures that gm just never fixed. Getting a rebuild or remanufactured is time to fix these. Either way i would be leary of buying a transmission from a nobody and putting it in yourself. Rebuilds may only last a year if not done thoroughly. They fix these as cheap as possible. If you have a bunch of miles on the transmission and they only fix the broken piece the rest of the unit still has a bunch of miles on it which is not good for longevity

 

[ivin74]

A local general auto repair shop just replaced my 2003 Tahoe transmission with a remanufactured one from GM which includes a 3-year warranty from GM. It was $4,200.

Not bad, my brother also did the samething in his wife's 2010 GMC Envoy like 2.5yrs ago and the total drive out cost was shy of $4k. He went that route also because GM gave him a 36mth warranty, every one else was giving him 12 months.