I am replacing the freeze plugs on the rear of my engine block (95 Vortec). I am wondering if there is a way to do it without completely dropping the transmission. Also, I was told that in order to remove the transmission, you need to jack the Blazer up in the front and the rear as well. Is this true? Thanks for the help.

 

I have just found that one of my rear freeze plugs is also leaking. I have been reading a lot on this forum and found a couple of ways to gain access. So far I have my blazer up on ramps and dropped the front drive shaft to begin removal of my transmission. Have you fixed yours yet? If so, I am wondering what you did

 

I am having to rebuild/replace my engine....I was going to remove the tranny but, decided not to. I did not have to raise the body and I do not have a body lift. Yet .

Mine is a 2wd and I removed the exhaust and removed the bell housing bolts from the tranny. The trans had been removed before so, one bolt was missing (the upper left bolt...if looking at the rear of the engine).

The only problem that I had was the bolt on the left right above the alignment dowel. There is not much room to get anything other than a ratcheting wrench in there. It took a while but, I got it out. You should have a total of 6 bolts that hold the tranny to the block, 3 on each side. Remember to remove the converter bolts first. That will involve removing the starter and the inspection cover...along with the support rods on the inspection cover.

 

When I bought the truck my cover was missing, so i have a perfect view of my torque converter. I don't believe that I had any support struts, I hope that i don't need them or else I need to find some. Ratchet wrenches sound like a fantastic idea, but I think I will have to move my transmission to the rear if not remove it entirely to get to those freeze plugs. This by far is the worst repair that i had to do in my driveway to date. I don't have an engine hoist available or I would have pulled my engine too.

 

If you take a flashlight and mirror and have a look at the rear of the engine I believe you will discover the leak is actually coming from the rear of the lower intake manifold.

 

I was pretty sure my leak was coming from the rear freeze plugs, and after all of the work of removing my tranny, it ends up they were fine. The side freeze plugs were leaking, running along the top of the oil pan gasket, and then dripping off around the crankshaft and coming out of the hole in the tranny. Be sure to check and replace your side freeze plugs before removing the transmission!!! It is not a light job. I replaced the side freeze plugs with rubber expansion plugs because it was impossible to hammer in the new ones with the engine in the car. I had a hard enough time just removing them; they were frozen in there pretty tight!

 

There are no freeze plugs at the back of your engine. The two plugs that are back there are at the back of the cam and balance shaft bores and do not open up into the water jacket. Could have saved yourself a ton of time by reading up on this first... I've posted this very information a number of times in the past.

 

Swartlkk, I have read a few of your posts concerning the rear freeze plug issue and based on your posts I decided to change my intake manifold gaskets first because I could not clearly see the leak at first. While I was tore into the engine I just pulled the heads and lapped the valves and resealed the heads and manifolds. I found some discrepancies with the head around the water ports and badly deteriorated gasket material so I for sure thought I found my problem. I put it all back together and put in some water to check if I got it all sealed and water still came out the back of my engine. I looked up in the bell housing from underneath and sure enough a stream of water was shooting out the back onto my flywheel and running down from the top of a freeze plug. As soon as I get the transmission pulled I am going to take a picture of my engine. But I did find a picture of the back of a same type of engine that I have for reference. (I know this has vortec heads and manifold, but the block is the same as mine)



*edit* My leak is coming from the far right brass plug just below the top right transmission bolt.

 

That is an older block as evidenced by the missing balance shaft bore plug above the cam plug. Since the author of this thread has a '97 which does not have any freeze plugs at the back of the block, that is all that I have commented on. The older blocks do indeed have core plugs on the front and rear of the block.

Here is a view from the back of a '96+ block:

 

Sorry, it was not clear as to who's engine you were referring to. But that clears up a characteristic about the difference in blocks for me and what a balance shaft was. Thanks for the picture references.