My transmission pan has been leaking way too much from the passenger side, especially since it's been sitting. Hall's offered to fix it, but I wanted to take care of it both to save the labor cost and to install a drain hole. Without a drain hole, here's how I normally have to get the oil out of the pan.
Not pretty. It just dumps out, and I hope the drain bucket catches it all. To affect change, I drilled a 1/2" hole with my nifty new drill press set to 600RPMs (slow and steady for drilling metal). It wasn't quite the right fit, so I widened it a bit. The way the drain hole adapter works is fairly simple. It's a large threaded bolt that goes through the drilled hole into the pan. A nut holds it in place, with a teflon washer on the outside for sealing. The inside of the large bolt is threaded as well, and a smaller bolt goes into that. Here's where I decided to put the hole:
This is a shot of it from the outside. Note the teflon washer. I located the hole in the front driver's side corner because I felt that area had the most clearance away from the transmission internals.
With the smaller bolt plug in place. In the upper right of the pic, note the front drive shaft.
It was a fun little project. I'd had the drain plug adapter for about a year in a box, so it was nice to finally be able to put it on.
