Hey everyone
looking to replace my transmission pan gasket on my 1996 dakota v6 4x4. I believe the transmission is a 42re. Is this doable without removing anything else? Crawled under there before it got -5000 degrees out and I have the shaft, an exhaust pipe and a support bar that runs from the passenger side to the drivers side all making access to the pan bolts look rather difficult. Anyone have any tips?

Also, am I crazy or can we not buy new control arms for these 1st gen trucks? All I can find are the bushings.
thanks for an advice

 

1) You SHOULD be able to; however, even on my 1988 2WD, the Y pipe makes the transmission guy cuss in at least three languages. YMMV.

2) I doubt you can find new ones, they've been NLA too long. However, the uppers share bushings with the 2WD; the lower 2WD bushings, one fits, one can be made to fit.

There's a couple of articles on here on how to fit the poly bushings into the 4WD LCA.

Check out https://dodgeforum.com/forum/1st-gen...-bushings.html

Side note: I have Energy Suspension bushings in my 1988 Dakota 2WD and love them; however, after buying and installing them, I ran across this note on the black Prothane bushings:

https://www.suspension.com/blog/red-...from-prothane/

YMMV natch.

RwP

 

If you unbolt the y pipe from the manifolds and unbolt the midpipe from the y pipe you can move the y pipe around and give yourself some wiggle room to get to the trans pan bolts