1) Is a tranny cooler really needed here: I'm putting a Derale pan on my TH400; that's the deep pan, with 3.5 more quarts and a bunch of tubes for air to blow thru. I'm thinking that is plenty of cooling for a bucket that spends most of it's time just cruising.
2) Can I just plug the ports on the tranny, or do I need to make a loop to connect them?
3) What operating temp would be acceptable? I'll probably add a temp gauge too.
I'll leave the donuts on the front porch, help yourself.
You can probably get away without a cooler but if you are using a high stall converter you might consider using one. If you are not going to run one you'll need to connect the two ports with a loop.
As Keep shows us....its not hard to cool those things! hahaha....I've done that on drag cars to get the trans temps down.....
As your engine temp rises, the temp can be transfered to your trans cooler with a in radiator type, DRAMATICALLY shortening your trans life Autos do not like heat at all....they like to be at operating temp for the motor and thats it. Anything over 235 and your trans is screaming for relief.
A cheap small power steering cooler with 2 loops in it.....they cost less than 20 bucks, or they used to, and they help cool things. With the added Fluid in Potvin Guys car, a cooler, even a small cheap one, will help if you have any stall in there.
Idling, with your foot on the brake, and taking off, moving the car to 40 mph is where all the heat is made.
The slipping of the convertor and the slipping of the clutches heats things up fast....They also make a inline spin on trans filter. The more metallic surface area you have, the cooler the fluid will be. If you run a metal inline spin-on filter and a metal line to and fro....that would be plenty.
I've seen guys go crazy and add oil cooler with fans and thermostats, etc. Yes, on really hi stall speeds, big blown motors and slicks on some Pro Street cars yes, you'd need it. OR if your tow rig needed cooling....definitely.
On our cars, a finned pan, a small cooler, or a Ted one with about 6 or 8 coils around a can with a bracket soldered on....you'd be good to go on cooling.
Any reason why you don't want to run a cooler? A $100 invested in a small cooler and some hose is much less expensive than a burnt up trans.. Add on towing (flatbed truck probably) then you have to pull it out, and have it rebuilt. I've never heard of a transmission that was ruined because it ran too cold?
Any reason why you don't want to run a cooler? A $100 invested in a small cooler and some hose is much less expensive than a burnt up trans.. Add on towing (flatbed truck probably) then you have to pull it out, and have it rebuilt. I've never heard of a transmission that was ruined because it ran too cold?
Excellent stuff, thanks guys. I've run this 400 with a small cooler for 20 years. I have to remove or relocate the cooler because the battery is going to take the space. I'm thinking the Derale pan will provide enough cooling. But I will add a trans temp gauge and watch it. Thanks for the chart, Ron, looks like if I keep it below 220 F it will outlast me. And I can always add a cooler later.
A temp gauge would nail it, but I'm not sure how you'd install it on a regular pan. My Derale pan has a fitting for one, and I'm a gauge freak, so I'll do it. My gut reaction is that a cooler is not needed for most buckets, unless you're running a high-stall converter that is always slipping a lot. Add a hot motor and a hot day and it could be dicey. I'll report my findings.
I always wondered about the Derale pans. Not much air moves through those tubes at a stoplight. And as road filth starts building up inside the tubes (and it will), the efficiency of heat transfer will start to suffer.
Methinks a new cooler would have come in at about half the cost of the pan and would have been much more efficient. Just my not-so-humble opinion.
The Derale Cooler Pan is nice but adds to the depth for the tubes clearance, may be an issue if the pan is already your low point in the center of the car. Years ago we built a car for one of the B&M guys, he told us they did some testing on some of the cars without external coolers and normal street rod stall converters ( 1800 to 2600) and were getting temps in the 300 degree range. That was enough to convince us to always use a cooler. We have always had great results from the Setrab and Derale stacked plate coolers, they dont need as much air flow as the cheaper fin over tube styles.
If theres a possibility of it being damaged due to location, OR, if the only place you can mount it is right beside the exhaust manifolds. If you have to run a cooler, hell, buy a roll of line, and run it so you can get some airflow. Mount it crossways on the frame underneath the body, but where road shrapnel won't take it out, or run it up to the firewall.
Treat that cooler like the rest of the car, be creative, mount it safely and accordingly. Remember, when it comes to cooling, surface area is your friend!
Oh my, I went looking for posts on trans filters and found this old one I started on coolers. If anyone is still watching, I did do without a cooler, and watched the temp. Around town and on the road, it stayed around 200F.
200 is pretty hot, not dangerous, but getting on up there. Our Chevy duallie towing a 12,000 lb trailer up a mountain, the trans temp never goes over about 160.
I used the cooler in my radiator(aluminum Ron Davis) and installed a trans temp gauge in the pan. The engine runs cool so the trans runs cool. I've never seen the trans temp over about 195*. 99.9% of time it stays around 155-160*.
I probably should add that my convertor is only about 2400 stall and I run it locked on the hiway. The 195* temp happened when I got the bright (?) idea to pull the trailer in the mountains with the convertor unlocked.
If the car idles in traffic for a long time the engine temp will creep up to around 200-210(runs 180 most of the time) and the trans temp will follow suit, but it never gets over about 170-180.
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