2007 Chevy Uplander bellhousing and flywheel shattered!
I came across this picture from a few years ago. Shown is a photo of the transmission I removed from a 2007 Chevrolet Uplander that the taxi driver got stuck. It was the middle of the winter and apparently he tried to “rock” the vehicle out. Needless to say, all he did is destroy the bell housing and ensure this old girl would be needing a transmission transplant before she got back to duty.
When this picture was taken, I was working as a technician on a fleet of small town taxicabs. The amount of F’ed up things I saw on a daily basis was unbelievable. This was one of the most memorable for sure. At this point I can’t remember the exact timeline but eventually this little van became my arch nemesis. Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong and it kept me with a constant headache.
One quick story comes to mind that I wanna tell you about. It was the middle of the summer in Northern NY and it was a Saturday. Normally my day off, but the business owners had a birthday party that day so I was in contact. Of course, being a 24/7 Taxi service, the vehicles were running the roads like any other day…
That’s when this lovely 2007 Chevy Uplander with Chevy’s grand old 3.9 or 3900 series engine decided that it was gonna start to overheat. With the mechanic (myself) being in the picture, I was asked to take a quick look along with the owner of the Taxi business. We quickly found what he suspected to be a stuck thermostat and I suspected to be something a little more major- say Head Gasket anyone? It’s not like these Chevrolet 3000 series weren’t known for them. Everything from the 3100 to the 3800 had known issues with the cooling system whether it be a bad water pump, head gasket, temperature sensor, coolant bypass pipes, etc etc etc. the list could go on, but the boss was not about to give up on this one. Instead, he let it run for a while and figured maybe popping the cap would let some of the “air out of the system”. Needless to say, along with the air that was purged also came coolant that was around 220 degrees Fahrenheit and it soaked him to the point of almost needing a trip to the hospital. If you missed that, the moral is DO NOT pop the cap on a pressurized cooling system unless you have the proper safety measures in place. This incident could have easily cost him an eye or worse.