440t4 Valve body gasket replacement

[Eastsids]

My pan gasket was leaving big stains in the driveway. It was noticeable leaking along the bottom right corner or the pan. Its possible without dropping the subframe to do the valve pan gasket/tcc solenoid on a 440. This job is not for the faint of heart. This post is for anyone with a 440 looking to replace their tcc solenoid. Firstly I recommend a cork or fiber gasket and let it soak in ATF. You will need to firstly remove the wheel and brake caliper and rotors. 19mm for lugnuts and 1/4 allen key for the slide bolts iirc. Remove 36mm axle nut. You will need both wheels off the ground to remove the three wheel bearing mounting bolts. These are T55 iirc. Slide the hub off the spline and pry the axle out using the small 10mm bolts around the axle shaft as leverage. Do NOT press on the pan as you may cause a permanent leak. The axle should pop out and slide off the inner axle spline. I removed the 2 lower strut bolts and the 15mm bolt and nut holding the ball joint and moved the knuckle out of the way. You will need an alignment afterwards. After this you can start removing all the 10mm pan bolts. You will probably need to separate the cooler lines from a bracket in front of a couple of the pan bolts. They should just pop out of the bracket. The back corner is especially tight, a wrench will be your friend. The top bolts were relatively easy once the airbox came off. Once I had all the bolts off I had to shimmy the pan over one of the cooler lines and at that point I had enough access. I slid the gasket in from the top and pulled it down a couple of inches at a time and using a bent coat hanger to pull it from the bottom (lol) the back right corner again was especially tight and it was a fight I can't lie. After that the tcc solenoid is held in by two 10mm bolts and a wire connector. Lube the o ring on the new solenoid and you're ready for reassembly. I don't claim to be a professional I'm just putting this out there for anyone who ran into the same issue and might not be able to drop the cradle for one reason or another....again it's *possible* but it's not for the faint of heart. Hope this helps somebody

[Eastsids]

PS I snugged the bolts tight on the pan. You will notice theyre not that tight from factory. Heard from somebody in the Facebook group stripping out all the bolts when using a torque wrench lol... not risking that.