2001 Pontiac Firebird V8 5.7L Engine Oil Pump General Motors OEM 12696357

Start by disconnecting the battery. Disconnect the negative terminal use an 8-millimeter wrench, loosen this up, take it off and set it aside. You don't have to remove the tire to access the lower radiator hose, but we took it off so you can see. The lower radiator hose is right here. Now, there's no drain on this radiator, so we're gonna have to take off that hose. Just gonna use a hose clamp tool. Just move this wire out of my way. Just gonna use a trim tool, just move this retainer for this wire and slide that out of the way. Now I can access the clamp, and slide the hose clamp tool or the clamp. Make sure you have a drain bucket underneath. Loosen that up and just try to twist the hose back and forth. Just be careful, you don't wanna splash too much coolant on you. Just gonna use a pry bar just to pry it out a little. You can use a straight blade screwdriver, just going back and forth. There we go.

Once you get this started, you might wanna lower the vehicle. And one thing I forgot to mention, make sure you do this while the engines cool, you don't wanna do this with hot coolant. And just slide this off, and there we go. Now remove this cover. Use an 8-millimeter socket, loosen up this bolt, and slide the cover out. Now we're gonna remove this snorkel. There is a bracket right here that attaches to the upper radiator hose. This one's broken, but if yours is there, just use a screwdriver or a trim tool and remove that, and loosen up these worm clamps with an 8-millimeter socket, or a straight blade screwdriver, and also this one over here. Now slide this snorkel off, right there, and then off the throttle body, and slide it up. Now disconnect the mass airflow sensor. There's a little lock tab on here, slide that back, and then push down on the terminal lock right there, and grab the airbox and pull it straight up, and then wiggle it out. There's the tabs that hold it down.

Now, we're gonna take the belt off. Normally the adapter, you're gonna use a 15-millimeter wrench or a serpentine belt tool that has the 15-millimeter adapter. This tensioner actually uses a 14-millimeter. So put that on, loosen this up, slide the belt off the idler arm right here, then loosen the tension on the tensioner, and you can take the belt off completely. Keep in mind how the belt goes. You could take a picture of the belt before you take it off, that might be helpful. Now, I'm gonna remove the tensioner. Use a 15-millimeter socket, and there's three bolts...and slide that out of the way. Now we're gonna start taking the hoses off the water pump. Just remove this hose from this bracket and this bracket, and then use a hose clamp tool. Now, we can move the hose clamp up the hose a little bit, just like that. And try to twist the hose a little bit. There we go. And slide it off. If it doesn't come off like that, you can take a pick tool, and just slide it in between the hose and the water pump, loosen it up all the way around. Just make sure that the coolant's drained at this point, and take these hoses off as well, the same way. Just use your hose clamp tool.

Now, we're gonna remove the bolts for the water pump, there's three on this side and three on the other side. Use a 10-millimeter socket. All those bolts are loose, take those out, and grab the pump, and just slide it out. Now, I'm gonna drain the oil, use a 13-millimeter wrench, sometimes it's a 15-millimeter wrench, and take the drain plug out. Make sure you have a drain bucket below to catch the oil. Now the oil's drained out put the drain plug back in, and snug it down. Now we're gonna remove the level sensor. You're gonna use a pick, preferably a hook style pick like this, or even a 90-degree pick will work, and then just try to get underneath the clip of where the connector is, pull up, and disconnect the connector. So what you're doing with the pick is trying to get under there and just lift up, just slightly, you don't wanna crack it, and disconnect that. Now use a 1-1/8 socket, and just loosen that. Once you crack it free, you should be able to spin it by hand. Take that off, and it looks like the O-ring got stuck to the side of the oil pan. Take that off, and just slide it up.

Now, if you have a shield that goes right here, you're gonna wanna take those bolts out, right there and right there, take that down, out of the way, this vehicle doesn't have that. Now, I wanna take this crossmember down. Use an 18-millimeter wrench on the back right here, on the nut, and then on the bolt, 18-millimeter socket. Take this out. And I'll do the same on this one, or I take those bolts out completely. There's two bolts right here with nuts on top. Do the same, 18-millimeter wrench and 18-millimeter socket. Now just support the crossmember, and pull those out, and slide it down. Now, we're gonna take off the front driveshaft. Before I do that, I just want to mark it from the front yoke. Just take a marker or a pen. This way I can put it back together the way it came apart, Just to avoid any unnecessary vibrations that you could cause. I'll use an 11-millimeter socket, or you can use a wrench. Take these caps off. Just twist it, and get these ones off.

Now, before I slide the driveshaft out, there is a clamp that goes right here. You're gonna wanna take that clamp off. It looks just like this one. You can either cut it off or just try to jam a screwdriver in there and pry it off. When you go to put it back together, you could use a tie wrap or a wire tie to put it back in that position. So this one doesn't have that, so I'm all set. Now just take a pry bar, pry back and just be careful, you don't want these caps to fall off. Just wiggle this back and forth a little bit, slide it down. Then you can slide this forward. I'll just pry this boot back a little bit...and just slide the shaft up.

I'm gonna need to remove these front axle bolts. Before I do that, I'll just, again, mark this, just to put it back to how it was when I took it apart. There we go. Now, I'll take these bolts out. Here's a 15-millimeter socket. You can rotate this, and take that out. And you can just grab this and move it to the side, you can do the same on the other one. Now disconnect the electrical connector, you can use a pick tool or a screwdriver, slide the lock up and slide it back, and disconnect this wire clip right here, slide that out. And there's another one further up. Just move the wire out of the way. And there's another one way up top, it's kind of hard to see, just kind of have to do it by feel. And that's all disconnected.

Because this steering bar is gonna be in my way, I need to turn the wheel all the way to the left. So you can turn the steering wheel to the left, or just grab the wheel and turn it. Alright, and now because I'm doing this by myself, I am gonna use a transmission jack just to support the front axle. Just get underneath here, just like that. Now, we're gonna take this bolt out up top here. We'll start with that one, and there's a nut on the backside of here. All right, take a 21-millimeter socket, and a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut, and take this off, and get the nut off. And now we can take the bolt out. Just slide it out, just like that. And I'll take this bolt out right here, the same 21-millimeter socket and 21-millimeter wrench. Take that out. There we go. Now, I'll take these two nuts off, use a 21-millimeter socket. There should be a washer there as well. Take this nut off as well. Now, this is completely disconnected, you can lower down the transmission jack a little bit. Just try to get this by the axle. And you kind of got a tip this up a little and twist it. There we go.

Now, this area has to get past that steering shaft, just tip it up. And I'm just using the transmission jack just to prevent it from falling to the ground. In some cases that you can get this past the steering shaft, it's giving us a little bit of trouble, so I'm actually gonna take the idler arm out so that I can move the shaft out of the way, and then we can drop this down a lot easier. I'm just gonna take these two bolts out, and there's nuts on the backside, and use a 21-millimeter wrench on the back, and a 21-millimeter socket on the front, and slide those out. You might have to turn the wheel back a little bit. Just don't...be careful not to crush the front differential because it is still in that position. Just slide this out, watch out for those transmission lines. It's good. Let's slide this forward. Now hopefully that gave us enough room. Just tip this down. There we go. Just twist it a little bit, slide it down, and you wanna tip the back of it up. Now there's a breather hose right there, and don't forget to disconnect that. And just slide it down.

The wires go through this bracket right here, this plastic bracket, and there's a bolt that goes right here. Use a 10-millimeter socket, take that bolt out. And grab this bracket and just slide it towards the driver's side, there's a little pin right there. It comes out just stays like that. There's a bracket right here that holds the transmission cooler lines and the two wiring harnesses. And you can take out the bolt, it's a 10-millimeter socket I'm gonna use. Take that off there, and then this is loose. And this little cover that covers the bell housing, there's a 10-millimeter bolt right there, take that out. And this is loose. And on the other side, there's a bracket right here. Just take this out, use the same 10-millimeter socket, slide that off. And if you have oil cooler lines, if your vehicle has oil cooler lines, you're gonna wanna take those off, this vehicle does not.

Now all along the perimeter of the oil pan, you're gonna take these bolts out. There's two in the front there, you're gonna use the same 10-millimeter socket, and then right here, here, back here. There's a hidden one back here, another one here, and here, and up there, some behind here as well. So take all those out. And it's two bolts to go into the back of the oil pan right here, use a 15-millimeter socket, take those up. And you might wanna support the oil pan when you take those out. Some of the oil's leaking out as well, should have a drain pan underneath here because we didn't take the oil filter off yet. And just slide this down, slide it up. Now, I can remove the AC belt, just gonna use a 3/8 extension on a ratchet, and just slide it into the tensioner, take the tension off the belt. Then you take the belt and slip it off on the inside of the crank pulley. Now, you can slide the belt off the compressor and away from the tensioner. And there you go. Now I'm gonna use a 24-millimeter socket and take the crank bolt out. All right, just be careful, don't loosen up too much or your gun might get stuck, you don't wanna break the fan shroud. And take it out by hand. Now, I'm gonna take a harmonic balance remover tool, and this clips onto the balancer. You can try to use a 3-jaw puller but it's really not that easy.

Now that's on there. I'm just gonna take a socket and a wrench, and as I tighten this down, it's gonna pull the balancer outward. There we go. Take the tool out, and there's the balancer. All right, so we're gonna take this bolt out without taking the AC compressor bracket off. If you are having trouble getting access to that bolt, you can take the compressor off, just don't disconnect the lines. You wanna take the bolts off the compressor, and then underneath that, you can access the bolt for that bracket. But that's gonna take a lot longer, so to do it quickly, we're just gonna use an open-ended 10-millimeter wrench, and just try to loosen it up this way. And that's significantly easier than taking that bracket off, and saves you a lot of time. And then take the rest of the seven bolts out, we're gonna use a 10-millimeter socket, and those are fairly easy to access. And now I'm just gonna pry the cover off, I'm just gonna use a small pry bar. Just put my hand in front of the cover so it doesn't fall, grab that, and then just slide it up. And I'm gonna take the gasket off right here, just carefully peel it off, you're gonna have to replace that. Now we're gonna remove this oil pickup tube and take this 10-millimeter bolt out right here. Just use a 10-millimeter socket. And then I'll take this nut off and this one as well. Use a 13-millimeter socket. All right, and then I'll just slide this down, and some oil might come out of the pump. Not too bad.

Now, we're gonna remove the oil pump bolts, just these two on this side and these two on this side. Use a 10-millimeter socket. Take those out. Now grab the pump and just slide it straight forward. Right, now you wanna clean this area, just make sure there's no gasket material on there, and there. There's no gasket that goes there, so just make sure that's smooth, the oil pump will adapt right up to that position there. So just so I don't install this pump dry, I'm gonna take some motor oil, and just fill the pump up. This is more of a personal preference, just to make sure that it's not dry. So, now there's oil in there and I'm just spinning the pump drive, just making sure that it gets lubricated properly.

Now, I can align the new pump up. There we go. That's lined up. I can put the bolts back in. And now I'm gonna torque these bolts to 18 foot-pounds. So on the pickup too, we're gonna take the O-ring off right here, just use a pick. And you wanna look if your pickup tube looks like this with this little groove here, you're gonna want to use the thicker O-ring. If you don't have that groove, then use the thinner O-ring. Just slide it on, just like this. Just gonna put a little oil on that O-ring, and slide it in position. Goes in just like that. And put the nuts back on back here. And then the 10-millimeter bolt is gonna go up here. Now, we're gonna torque the bolt first to 106 inch-pounds. That's good. And the nuts we're gonna torque to 18 foot-pounds. And now, before we get the timing cover on, we want to clean this surface. You can use a razor blade or a scraper, just be careful if you're using a razor blade, you don't wanna gouge the metal.

And we have our new timing cover, and there's a hole right here if you have a sensor or a different actuator for a different vehicle, but we don't have that. So we have this plate with a gasket. So we're gonna install that and put the bolts in, and then snug up the bolts with a 10-millimeter socket. And take the gasket and line it up. It only goes on one way, there is a little bump on this side over here. And take the bolts, and slide them through the cover, the gasket should hold the bolts in, just like this. And line the cover-up, and get the bolts started. You don't wanna tighten these down too much. So I want the bolts in, just loose enough so that I can move the cover. Now there's a special tool that GM uses to align this cover. We don't have that tool, so we're just gonna install the harmonic balancer, and do the best we can. Now install the harmonic balancer. And now we're gonna use this harmonic balancer installer, and that's gonna slide the balancer onto the crankshaft. Now, it's easier to install this from underneath the vehicle and tighten this down, I just have to tighten the nut down. Now the balancer's all the way down, so I can loosen up the tool, and take it off.

Now, we're gonna take the original crank bolt and reinstall it. Now we're just gonna tighten it down, and this is gonna ensure that the crank pulley is all the way down, and loosen it up, take it out. You wanna install your new bolt. Now before we put our new crank bolt in, we are gonna need to hold the engine from spinning. So, just take this cover off right here, and then I'm gonna take a straight blade screwdriver, and I'm just gonna have an assistant hold this and prevent the crankshaft from spinning as I torque this. They do make a special adapter that you can bolt onto the engine so that it holds the flywheel from spinning, but we don't have that, so we're just gonna use a screwdriver. And put the new bolt in. Now there's a sequence that I need to do to tighten this down. So the first thing you need to do is torque this to 110 foot-pounds. All right, just got to loosen this up a little bit. They want you to loosen it 360 degrees, which, just loosen it up. Now, I'm gonna torque this down to 59 foot-pounds. And then you need to...if you have an angle meter, use an angle meter. If not, just do the best you can, and you wanna tighten it 125 degrees. And then from underneath here, you wanna take a straight edge, preferably a metal straight edge, and just line this up. So you can still move the front cover up and down. Just get that lined up and check the other side as well, make sure that's good. Now, you can tighten these bolts down to 18 foot-pounds. And then after you do that, double-check and make sure that it didn't drop at all, and you need to adjust it. And do the same with the other ones.

Now, take some brake parts cleaner, and just clean all this surface area. You could take a scraper if some of the buildup seems kind of high, or a razor blade, just be careful, you don't wanna gouge the metal. Now if you're reusing the oil pan, you're gonna wanna take this gasket off. They are riveted down from the factory, so if it's never been replaced before, you're gonna have to drill these rivets out. So there's one there and one there, and that's just for assembly from the factory, so you don't have to put those rivets back in. Just make sure you clean up all the shavings that fall in there and then clean up the pan just like we cleaned up on the engine with either a razor blade, or a scraper, and some brake parts cleaner, and a rag. Now take the new oil pan gasket and just line it up, just like that. Now, there's a couple sections where the case splits, where the front cover and rear cover split on the engine, and it's a good idea to take a little bit of RTV. We're gonna do a little dab right here, probably a little less than that would be good, and then over here. There's these little hash marks, right there, and right there. That's just gonna help it seal where those case-halves meet or where those covers meet. And just slide it in position.

Now just get a couple bolts started. And now, I'm gonna start snugging these bolts up before I torque them, and put these two lower bell housing bolts in, and snug those up. Now, I'm gonna use a torque wrench and torque all these bolts and the front cover bolts, these two, to 18 foot-pounds, and then after that, we have to torque these to a different torque. So start with these ones. I'll just start in the middle and work my way out. And these two rear bolts for the oil pan, the longer ones, you are gonna torque those to 106 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. And torque these to lower bell housing bolts to 37 foot-pounds.

On the side of the block, there is a plug right here. Now that's gonna feed to the oil pump itself. Now, after you're at this point, when you put the oil pan on, and you put the oil filter on, what you could do is fill up the engine with oil, and then you can take that plug out, and actually prime the pump right there. Now, we put oil in the pump before, so we should be all right. The preferred way to do it is to put oil in that plug and prime that for about half an hour, let oil drain into that, and that would help with priming it, but we should be okay with how we did it. Now with this cover, we can put the bolt that goes right there, and snug that down. Just snug it up and this cover on the driver's side, and put the bolt in, and snug it up. Now this transmission cooler line bracket, line this up, and take the bolt, get the bolt in, and get that started, and tighten it down. And this front wiring bracket, there's a pin right here that's gonna slide into the oil pan. Just slide over, just like that, and take this bolt, put this bolt in here, and tighten it down.

Right, now we're gonna install the front differential. I am using a transmission jack to help support it. There we go. All right, hard part's over. All right, now I'm just gonna try to get all the mounts lined up. All right, this is lined up, you can put those nuts on right here. There's washers and nuts, washer on, and the nut. Just leave these loose, you can torque these later. And take these bolts. Just line this up, and put the nut on. And then this mount, you're gonna have to lower this down a little bit, just get that lined up, and slide the bolt through there, and the nut on the backside. Now, we're gonna tighten this bolt down, use a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut. And if you have the ability to torque this, torque this to 75 foot-pounds. And this bolt as well, 75 foot-pounds. Tighten these two nuts, then you can torque these nuts to 67 foot-pounds. We can hook up the wiring harness just to line this up. Plug this connector in, and then where the wire retainers are, just hook the wire into those and lock those down, right there, and then there's another one up here, and then there's another one way further up. And hook this vent hose up. That should be good. Now, line up the front CV shafts, and put the bolts back in.

I'm just gonna hold the rotor with the pry bar or the axle from spinning, and then torque these to 58 foot-pounds. Then you're gonna do the same on the other one. Now take the front driveshaft and just slide it over that crossmember and the exhaust, and slide it into the transfer case, and push that boot on there, and then slide the front U-joint into the yoke, and try to line it up with your marks, and put these caps on. Now, I'm just gonna use a pry bar to prevent the driveshaft from spinning, and torque these bolts to 18 foot-pounds. Now, you should get a clamp that goes on here pretty much like the clamp that came off of there, there's a metal clamp, or some people actually use a wire tie on that, that works as well. And we'll take the idler arm and get that lined back up, get that back in position. Put the bolts and the nuts back on, and torque these bolts to 73 foot-pounds. Make sure you have a wrench on that nut. All right, take this crossmember and slide it up in position, and take the bolts. Two longer ones go over here, and two shorter ones go over here. Put the nuts on top. Put the nuts on the front, and tighten all these bolts down. And just double check to make sure the drain plugs tight, snug it up.

And now, I'm just gonna prime the filter with engine oil, just make sure you use the correct oil. Try to get it in that center hole, and just make sure you get oil on the ring of the seal. And that's good. Now install the filter, line that up, and then once it's snug, go about another quarter turn. That's good. And take the level sensor and carefully slide it in the hole. Then you can torque this to 115 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. And take the plug, line it up, plug it back in. Now take the AC belt and slide it behind the crank pulley, and go around the AC compressor, and on the tensioner. That looks pretty good. And just grab the belts right here, and take your 3/8 extension and ratchet, just loosen up the tension on the tensioner, and walk the belt around the crank pulley. And double-check, that looks good, everything's on there right. Now if you have these covers, one under here, and also the plastic one upfront, you wanna put those on, and snug up the bolts. Now, you wanna clean up the sealing surface where the water pumps gonna go. Just use a scraper. If you're careful, you can use a razor blade. Just scrape any excess gasket material, right there, and then also right in here. And wipe it down with a rag and some brake parts cleaner.

Now, if you don't have a new thermostat housing to put on your new water pump, you can transfer over the old one. Just use a 10-millimeter socket, take these bolts out, slide that out. Now I'm gonna replace the seal for the thermostat. Just grab the thermostat and just pry it off. Now you wanna clean all this up. Use a scraper or some emery cloth, and just clean all this corrosion up. Now just pull the seal off and wipe down the thermostat. Take the new seal, and it is...it does go on a certain way, where this little breather valve is, that's where this little mark goes. And just wrap this around, just like that. And there is an indent right there, where that little tab goes. Just like that, that looks good. Slide that in position, and put my bolts in. Snug these up first, and now we'll torque those bolts to 11 foot-pounds. Now, we wanna take and put some new gaskets on the water pump. If you're reusing the water pump, then you wanna clean up the surfaces where the gaskets are, and slide the bolts through. The bolts will kind of hold the gasket a little bit, just like that. Now carefully slide the water pump in place, making sure the gaskets don't fall. And snug them up, snug up the bolts.

Now, we're gonna torque these six bolts. There's 2 passes, so the first pass, you're gonna torque them to 11 foot-pounds, and then the second pass, tighten it to 22 foot-pounds. Now, we can attach all the coolant hoses and the clamps. That's good. Do the same at the heater hoses, and take the tensioner pulley, and line this up. Get the bolts started, then torque these bolts to 37 foot-pounds. Now we can install the upper radiator hose, just line this up, slide it down, and slide the hose clamp down in position. Now, we can install the serpentine belt, go around the crank pulley, and up around the water pump, and down around the power steering pump pulley, and up around the alternator, and then go around the tensioner, and then last is the idler pulley. So we're gonna put a little tension on the belt, and you can use your serpentine belt tool, or just a wrench or a ratchet. Loosen the tension on the tensioner, and slide the belt underneath. Just double-check all your pulleys, and it looks good.

Now line the airbox up, and then push it down into the grommets, and plugged the mass airflow sensor in. Now take the snorkel, and line this up over the mass airflow sensor, and on the throttle body, there we go. And snug these worm clamps down, and put this cover on. Slide it in position, and tighten it down. And now we can put the appropriate oil in. Use a funnel. All right, put the cap back on. Now, hook the battery up, and tighten down the terminal, just snug it up. Make sure you wiggle it, make sure it's not loose. Now you can add the appropriate coolant, a 50/50 mix. And you want to top this off up to where the full line is. And then you start the vehicle, let the vehicle run for about 10 minutes, monitoring the temperature gauge while you're running the vehicle, and monitoring the level. You're gonna wanna top it off while it's still running. And once it's warmed up, shut the vehicle off, let it cool, put the cap on, and then after it's cooled, check the level again.

Now when you first start the vehicle, you wanna take a look at this oil pressure gauge, and just make sure that comes up fairly quickly. So this is the first time starting. Just watch that gauge and it came up pretty quickly. Now because we disconnected the steering idler arm, it would be a good idea to have the vehicle aligned after you're done.