There is no drain plug for the automatic transmission on my 2003 Chevrolet Impala 3.4L V6.
It’s crazy work to get the fluid out. You have to actually remove the screws on one side of the pan and loosen the screws on the other to drain the eight quarts of automatic transmission fluid. It’s a messy job.
This photo shows the drain pan, and I’ve marked the screws on one side, but these screws go all the way around the pan.
You have to take the pan cover off completely in order to replace the filter anyway, but it sure would be nice to drain the fluid in a controlled manner first.
I’m glad I only need to do this every 50,000 miles.
Developing software is a lot like driving a car. Software has a maintenance mode, and cars have a maintenance mode.
There is a school of thought that dictates that if you know the direction that your software is headed, you try to incorporate some flexibility into your design in order to more easily accommodate those changes.
Yet, there is a school of thought that believes that you should only write what you need, and simply re-factor in the future if you hit a road block with your current design. The idea behind this is that the number one risk factor for all development tasks is the time line. Therefore, the number one goal should be to simply get it done.
Those that coded two digit years into their code used the secpmd concept. Yes, we were still using a lot of that software when the year 2000 came, and a lot of changes had to be made while the software was in maintenance mode.
While it was certainly a lot of work to re-factor the software to handle four digit years, all of these software projects that had to be updated for Y2K had one thing in common–they were done. They had made the move from development to production and maintenance.
It’s understandable why Chevrolet decided not to put a drain plug on the pan. They would have to design it. They would have to test the plug. They would have to order the parts, and keep them in stock, all for something that would only be used every 50,000 miles.
When asked why there was no drain plug, the developers probably answered, “Well, just loosen the screws and drain it that way. It’s not the ideal situation, but it’s done.”
“What about when we hit the year 2000?” they asked. “We’ll fix it then. At least it’s done. Go make some money.”