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Better late than never in joining the party, right?
Reloader and I installed a transmission cooler in my H3 today, about a week after he did one in his. One of his primary concerns was that maybe he bought a two small of a cooler and after a bit of research, it appears that the 14,400 BTU ones are designed to be additional cooling when retaining the OEM setup. If bypassing the OEM, it's recommended to get a bigger cooler. I went with this one from Amazon: Long Tru-Cool LPD Automatic Transmission Oil Cooler 4589 24,000 GVW as it has about 22,000 BTU cooling capacity.
It's designed to not need a thermostat or thermal bypass as the fluid path changes based on the viscosity of the fluid as it heats up. If I lived in a cooler climate I might add the thermal bypass.
Here's the package with the contents as received. Note that the contents are exactly the same as other brands, so it's apparent that one mfr. is making them for different brands. The only hardware we used were the brackets, and we of course use the hose and the cooler.
We used M6 bolts, washers and nylock nuts to mount the cooler.
We decided to position it on the passenger side of the radiator, as the driver's side has the a/c condensor lines and it was a really tight fit. To make this a bit easier we relocated the horn by extending the power wires to it.
The first hole we used was one of the existing holes for the hood latch assembly. The trans cooler is standing about 1.5" in front of the radiator. You can see the Sharpie marks to the left. 1" left of the OEM hole for the grill, for the second top hole that had not yet been drilled. Unlike the driver's side bracket, this one was installed at a slight angle, maybe 15 degrees. (No picture of that bracket)
The second hole was drilled in the center support a bit below the ambient temperature sensor.
The bottom passenger side mount: we utilized the lower grill bolt hole and cut through the shroud to mount to the radiator. At this point the radiator is rock solid and isn't moving. (The black mounting screw is in place temporarily - we removed it to reinstall the grill and then put the screw back in its place)
The horn was relocated to the driver's side using an existing hole. The wires were lengthened.
Underneath the clips were removed from the OEM cooler and the fluid drained from the cooler and the lines. I replaced about 2.5 quarts in this process. To further clean out the cooler we sprayed in a lot of brake cleaner and blew it out with compressed air just in case this fails in the future - we want to minimize the residual trans fluid that makes it back into the coolant in the event of failure.
Note that we removed the two sway bar brackets to provide for easier clearance.
Each trans line was cut about 1.5" from the end and fitted with plastic caps and hose clamps. They were then reinserted and clipped into the OEM trans cooler to minimize any future contamination from dirt.
From there the crimps were cut on the trans lines, just enough to get a screwdriver in there to expand the crimps and pull them off. The hoses could then be pulled off, revealing the trans lines with factory barbs.
In this picture you can see the crimp being expanded. You can also see where we cut off the trans lines to create the nubs that went back into the OEM cooler.
Here's one line with the crimp and hose removed.
A flaring tool was put to the ends to make absolutely sure that the hoses would not peel off.
The inlet hose to the cooler was fitted to the bottom; the outlet to the top. The lines were clamped with fuel line clamps as they provide better clamping with less chance of cutting the lines than traditional worm clamps. Additional layers of rubber were provided at any place we were concerned about rubbing.
We only had an extra 1" of line from what was supplied in the box.
Lines were zip tied periodically and clearances checked.
We added back 2 qts of fluid, ran the truck for a while, checked the trans fluid again and added another half quart.
Total time was probably close to four hours for this job as we did it. Total cost was about $130 for cooler, extra hardware and trans fluid.
For Reloader, since he already installed that 14,400 BTU cooler (and I had bought one too) he's just going to double up that cooler in series to get his desired cooling capacity.
Reloader and I installed a transmission cooler in my H3 today, about a week after he did one in his. One of his primary concerns was that maybe he bought a two small of a cooler and after a bit of research, it appears that the 14,400 BTU ones are designed to be additional cooling when retaining the OEM setup. If bypassing the OEM, it's recommended to get a bigger cooler. I went with this one from Amazon: Long Tru-Cool LPD Automatic Transmission Oil Cooler 4589 24,000 GVW as it has about 22,000 BTU cooling capacity.
It's designed to not need a thermostat or thermal bypass as the fluid path changes based on the viscosity of the fluid as it heats up. If I lived in a cooler climate I might add the thermal bypass.
Here's the package with the contents as received. Note that the contents are exactly the same as other brands, so it's apparent that one mfr. is making them for different brands. The only hardware we used were the brackets, and we of course use the hose and the cooler.
We used M6 bolts, washers and nylock nuts to mount the cooler.
We decided to position it on the passenger side of the radiator, as the driver's side has the a/c condensor lines and it was a really tight fit. To make this a bit easier we relocated the horn by extending the power wires to it.
The first hole we used was one of the existing holes for the hood latch assembly. The trans cooler is standing about 1.5" in front of the radiator. You can see the Sharpie marks to the left. 1" left of the OEM hole for the grill, for the second top hole that had not yet been drilled. Unlike the driver's side bracket, this one was installed at a slight angle, maybe 15 degrees. (No picture of that bracket)
The second hole was drilled in the center support a bit below the ambient temperature sensor.
The bottom passenger side mount: we utilized the lower grill bolt hole and cut through the shroud to mount to the radiator. At this point the radiator is rock solid and isn't moving. (The black mounting screw is in place temporarily - we removed it to reinstall the grill and then put the screw back in its place)
The horn was relocated to the driver's side using an existing hole. The wires were lengthened.
Underneath the clips were removed from the OEM cooler and the fluid drained from the cooler and the lines. I replaced about 2.5 quarts in this process. To further clean out the cooler we sprayed in a lot of brake cleaner and blew it out with compressed air just in case this fails in the future - we want to minimize the residual trans fluid that makes it back into the coolant in the event of failure.
Note that we removed the two sway bar brackets to provide for easier clearance.
Each trans line was cut about 1.5" from the end and fitted with plastic caps and hose clamps. They were then reinserted and clipped into the OEM trans cooler to minimize any future contamination from dirt.
From there the crimps were cut on the trans lines, just enough to get a screwdriver in there to expand the crimps and pull them off. The hoses could then be pulled off, revealing the trans lines with factory barbs.
In this picture you can see the crimp being expanded. You can also see where we cut off the trans lines to create the nubs that went back into the OEM cooler.
Here's one line with the crimp and hose removed.
A flaring tool was put to the ends to make absolutely sure that the hoses would not peel off.
The inlet hose to the cooler was fitted to the bottom; the outlet to the top. The lines were clamped with fuel line clamps as they provide better clamping with less chance of cutting the lines than traditional worm clamps. Additional layers of rubber were provided at any place we were concerned about rubbing.
We only had an extra 1" of line from what was supplied in the box.
Lines were zip tied periodically and clearances checked.
We added back 2 qts of fluid, ran the truck for a while, checked the trans fluid again and added another half quart.
Total time was probably close to four hours for this job as we did it. Total cost was about $130 for cooler, extra hardware and trans fluid.
For Reloader, since he already installed that 14,400 BTU cooler (and I had bought one too) he's just going to double up that cooler in series to get his desired cooling capacity.
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