I found the link that I looked at to do this - it was actually in a cadillac forum, but the denali and cadillac front end are virtually the same:
http://www.cadillacforums.com/forum...07/612809-diy-replace-oil-pan-gasket-6-a.html
The front diff is fund to get back in, but I managed to do it myself. Had to gut, or "belly" it up into place. Damn I'd love to have a lift...
The thing is, when you're under there looking at it all you'd think you could get to it without taking all of this stuff off. But when you consider that inside the pan is the oil pickup line diving right down into the pan, and that little plug or line they have coming off of your pinion steering is RIGHT BELOW your pan, you realize that you have to start wrenching on stuff to get the pan off.
It all came off relatively easy, but to have nearly exploded my engine because of failure of this little grommet just sucks. THis is the second GM truck that has nearly gone BOOM because of internal oil grommet failure (other was 1995 K2500) I have records from the guy that sold this to me from two trips to a dealership - nearly $2k in parts they threw at this thing. The guy selling it just gave up, and I didn't even see the problem because at +20MPH oil pressure was fine, it was only when warm at idle did the viscocity of the oil get to where it would bleed out of this grommet. My trip though the back woods was more to see if high speeds alerted me to any trouble, I don't think I even let it idle at one stop light when it was warm, I bought this out near the boonies.
Anyway, I've posted pictures and my experience on a bunch of threads and forums because my research had me freaking out about cam bearings, people that eventually had massive battles about blown engines - just take a look around the internet and you'll quickly find some horror stories about the 2007/08 escalade/denali 6.2 oiling and cam bearing problems. I'm guessing at least a portion of cam bearing failure folks had their oil supply cut off from a bleeding pickup grommet like me.
I hope others consider including this in their ?100k-150k? maintenance.
And on a separate note, Wake I see you've got an Audi. I just bought a 2001 Audi S4 - the thing is a little beast! Black on black, someone else had some problems they couldn't solve, I worked my way through it to make it a runner and pass DEQ - all stock, needs a bunch of little things done in addition to the stuff they couldn't fix...