tomb1269

Adding a trans cooler is always money well spent. Look at Rapid cool or a factory unit, they should be rated by weight capacity. When installing if you can bend metal lines around radiator etc to minimize pinching the rubber hose. Use the rubber hose to onnect to original lines or to go from frame/radiator support to tranny. Make sure they have a little play for vibration and movement in the drive train.

smokeywren

Depends on what you already have. Lots of pickups already have at least one tranny cooler, and some have two - an oil-to-water (OTW) heat exchanger in the radiator, and another oil-to-air (OTA) heat exchanger in the front of the radiator.

If you don't already have any ATF cooling at all, then you want to add the biggest heat exchanger that will fit in front of the radiator, along with ATF lines and fittings to get hot ATF from the tranny and return cooled ATF back to the tranny

If you already have an OTA cooler, you might want to replace it with a bigger unit. If there's not room in front of the radiator, then fabricate a mounting system and install it under the cab. If you want to really do a good job, then be sure the new OTA cooler has a fan to force air through the cooler at slow speeds such as city traffic. Like this one:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/prm-12311

You will need more parts than just the cooler with fan. You don't want that fan running all the time, so you also need to install a temp sensor in the cooler return line that will turn on the fan only when the cooled ATF is more than 180° F., and turn it off when the ATF temp falls to less than 180°.

tomb1269

Smokeywren - I am not aware of any vehicle made that has an automatic transmission and does not have a basic trans fluid cooler in the radiator, the only difference I know of is whether it is water to fluid (most common in today's cars) or air to fluid a (it was common in older cars for the bottom few rows of the radiator to actually be used as a trany cooler).
The OPs original post was for if he "needs to tow", and the summit unit with a fan is a lot of overkill and cost for a truck that is most likely limited by its GCWR to hauling trailers under 6000lbs in not under 5000lbs.

smokeywren

We don't know that without more info.

Automatic transmissions go to an early grave if allowed to get too hot. So on mine I insist on a tranny temp gauge, and watch it closely when towing. My 2012 Lariat has a built-in tranny temp gauge, but my previous F-250 didn't, so I had to add an aftermarket tranny temp gauge. 200° F.sump temp is hot, 210° is the yellow (pay attention!) zone, and 225° is the red line.

If you see over 210°, then you need more tranny cooling. Whatever it takes to maintain the tranny sump temp below 225°, and preferably below 210°. Maybe just add an OTA cooler before the radiator. Maybe replace the small stock OTA cooler with a bigger one. But if that doesn't do the job, then some have gone with the huge OTA cooler with added fan to get the job done. That costs a lot less than rebuilding your tranny/torque converter, or perhaps paying for a new tranny.

'99 thru 2000 Ford SuperDuty diesel. They had an inadequate OTA tranny cooler, but not an OTW cooler in the radiator. Ford changed that in February 2000, so from then on the SuperDuty diesel had both an OTA and OTW cooler. But that still wasn't enough for some conditions. So two years later with the new 5R110 tranny, Ford installed a huge OTA cooler to go along with the OTW cooler. That fixed the problem. In the meantime, thousands of SuperDuty owners added a big OTA cooler with fan under the cab.

rhcdjr

Since this thread is for the 7 pin and 4 pin trailer plug here goes. Just purchased new 2012 f150 Platinum 4x4 with both a 7 pin and a 4 pin at the back. My problem is there is a constant 12v at the 7 pin but it does not seem to be active with the key on, engine running. So is there a fuse to add to the in cab fuse block or at the engine bay fuse block. Never had a problem finding this on my 94, 99 or 2004. Little help please.

Steve Osborne

under hood...relay and fuse..
https://www.f150forum.com/f38/traile...-power-118674/