brycebba
I'm Awesome
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2014
- Messages
- 439
- Reaction score
- 19
I started off doing the cooler mod in the sticky to add the B&M cooler in place of the factory cooler which provided less than satisfactory results on my 454 4L80E combo. I would be scared to tow any heavy trailer for fear of cooking my trans. Unloaded up grades and around town it would get to about 180 or so. Even on highway with the converter locked it would not cool down much at all.
Someone on here told me that there is a transmission cooler built into the radiator before the auxiliary cooler. No wonder the added cooler barely made any impact if at all. Long story short, I hate those setups. Coolant and transmission fluid should never be that close in my opinion. All that design does is heat soak the fluid to the same temp as the coolant so you are fighting a losing battle against heat.
I bypassed the radiator cooler and just to try it I used a couple to join the two lines coming out of the radiator as a proof of concept. I found that the trans ran cooler for a while but that small B&M supercooler was not enough. I decided that I needed something bigger that could handle the job.
I ordered a B&M 20274 supercooler and decided to be safe I would plumb it in parallel with the existing supercooler. I called the folks at B&M and they said that the supercoolers should never be mounted ports down because that negates the low pressure design that helps the trans. I hooked both coolers with the ports up. So I ran a set of in/out lines to each cooler and connected each type to the line from the transmission with a T. This essentially uses both like they are an independent cooler where hooking the two coolers together is not efficient because the first cooler is doing a lot of the work and you don't get the full cooling potential. I had to remove the fan and trim the valence under the grill to fit the big cooler.
Now I feel like I can tow a trailer and be good. It was 89 today and after quite a bit of city driving and leaving the truck in Park idling for 15 minutes the highest I got was 165. Cruising with the converter locked I was ranging from about 135 to 150. I am very pleased with these results and I think my transmission will thank me for a long time to come. It was pretty easy. I just took my time to make sure I did it right. Hopefully anyone considering this finds this helpful because there are a lot of nay sayers on bypassing radiator coolers because the trans will run too cool. I have done this to another truck and even the cold utah winters did fine.
Someone on here told me that there is a transmission cooler built into the radiator before the auxiliary cooler. No wonder the added cooler barely made any impact if at all. Long story short, I hate those setups. Coolant and transmission fluid should never be that close in my opinion. All that design does is heat soak the fluid to the same temp as the coolant so you are fighting a losing battle against heat.
I bypassed the radiator cooler and just to try it I used a couple to join the two lines coming out of the radiator as a proof of concept. I found that the trans ran cooler for a while but that small B&M supercooler was not enough. I decided that I needed something bigger that could handle the job.
I ordered a B&M 20274 supercooler and decided to be safe I would plumb it in parallel with the existing supercooler. I called the folks at B&M and they said that the supercoolers should never be mounted ports down because that negates the low pressure design that helps the trans. I hooked both coolers with the ports up. So I ran a set of in/out lines to each cooler and connected each type to the line from the transmission with a T. This essentially uses both like they are an independent cooler where hooking the two coolers together is not efficient because the first cooler is doing a lot of the work and you don't get the full cooling potential. I had to remove the fan and trim the valence under the grill to fit the big cooler.
Now I feel like I can tow a trailer and be good. It was 89 today and after quite a bit of city driving and leaving the truck in Park idling for 15 minutes the highest I got was 165. Cruising with the converter locked I was ranging from about 135 to 150. I am very pleased with these results and I think my transmission will thank me for a long time to come. It was pretty easy. I just took my time to make sure I did it right. Hopefully anyone considering this finds this helpful because there are a lot of nay sayers on bypassing radiator coolers because the trans will run too cool. I have done this to another truck and even the cold utah winters did fine.
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