jdguns13

Bought a camper, weighs 6500 lbs. truck limit is 6700. Towed 90 miles in 90 degree temp pretty well, would get a little hot, then cool, thermostat is working. Stopped for 20 minutes (guess truck perked a bit and got hot), truck seem to "roar" (noisey, normally truck is very quiet) starting the pull, finally got up to speed, 55 miles to go, not quite pulling as well as during the first 90 miles. The last 25 miles running a little hotter, not cooling, but not overheating either. Seems like tranny is not hooking up. What could it be?
On the way to pick up the trailer, truck ran quiet, (no roar), 16-17 mpg, ran cool. Why so noisey? CAT Plugged? Tranny fluid too hot? Engine has 35K on it, Tranny has 125K. It's a super cab 4x4, 5.0 liter, auto. Stock tires.

jcain

Tow haul button?

jdguns13

Checked this morning, my button was engaged, overdrive was on. So, I imagine that is not a good thing and I had the truck operating at the wrong shift points. Is that true? Also, by my description of the problem why did you think it was that? I'm curious.
I also have the opportunity to increase the trany cooler to an F250 size which has 80% more cooling surface. Cost me $60, think its worth it?
Thank you for your input, it is much appreciated, the truck has served me well.

smokeywren

Okay, you've lost me. You have a '95 F-150 with a 5.0L engine and a tow/haul transmission?

The '95 is the old body style (OBS) before the swoopy '97 models came out. So that was a long time ago. The old 5.0L Mustang engine was available in the F-150 back then, but tow/haul? The first tranny with tow/haul mode in a SuperDuty was the 2003 model. Did the F-150 have it as far back as '95 models?

Depends on your history of tranny temps. Do you have a tranny temp gauge that will give you sump temp? If you ever see over 210° tranny sump temp, you need more tranny cooling. Heat is the tranny killer. More than 225° sump can turn your tranny into toast in a very short time, especially if you aren't running synthetic ATF.

A bigger oil-to-air (OTA) tranny cooler won't hurt anything. There are several different F-250 tranny coolers, depending on engine. The best one is for a 2003-up 6.0L diesel engine with 5R110 automagic tranny. Earlier diesels had very puny OTA coolers, so they wouldn't be the best choice. I replaced the OTA cooler in my '99.5 7.3L diesel with the bigger one from a V-10 gasser, and along with synthetic ATF and other mods it was adequate. Today the guys with the old 7.3L diesel are replacing the puny stock OTA cooler with one from a 6.0L diesel.

WARNING: Most used Ford tranny coolers available on the market are trashed coolers. You don't want one at any price. Ford requires the OTA tranny cooler to be replaced any time a tranny is worked on, because the cooler would probably be full of tranny trash that won't flush out. Unscrupulus Ford techs rescue the trashed coolers from the dumpster and sell them on E-Bay and similar places for good prices. But that trash will slowly work free and ruin your tranny. So if you found a used OTA cooler for $60, be certain it did not come out of a Ford that had tranny problems. A new 6.0L cooler that you know is not a used cooler will cost almost $300, but you can buy used ones on E-Bay for $100 or less. But that is no bargain if it costs you a tranny rebuild.

kozal01

iTrader: (2)

You dont have tow haul, you just have an OD on/off button on the shifter. Either way, OD should have been off. As far as the loud engine what you are probably hearing is the engine fan engaging to try and cool the engine, some can be pretty loud when they are engaged.

smokeywren

Yep. The engine fan runs in a thick viscous oil, so it's always "on". But there is also a clutch in the fan that will lock up if the air coming through the radiator gets up to about 200°; which will happen when working the engine hard, such as towing up a grade. The first time my engine fan locked up it scared the pooie out of me. It sounded like a 747 with afterburners was taking off from my hood. So my first thought was that maybe I had blown up something expensive. But it was just the engine fan clutch locking up and the engine fan immediately going from a low cruising RPM to a very high emergency cooling RPM. The locked engine fan at high engine RPM will suck a hurricane worth of fresh air through the radiator, thus quickly cooling off the engine. But it does make a helluva racket if your engine is working hard at high RPM.

jdguns13

THANKS Guy's, great advice, sorry I misled on the "tow" button when it was just the overdrive. Also, the fan engaging is what I heard, I will look into cooling this beast a bit.