smokeywren

You'll be wasting money, and might do more harm than good if you don't know how to add another oil-to-air heat exchanger without reducing flow through the tranny cooling system. If you do it anyway, then be certain the last step of the install is to test the flow of ATF back into the tranny. I'm not sure about the F-150, but on my previous F-250 diesel, the return flow rate was a minimum of one gallon per minute at engine idle RPM.


My F-150 has the same tranny cooling system as yours, with tow rating of 8,000 pounds. You'll be overloaded over the payload capacity of your F-150, but your tranny cooling system is robust enough to handle overloading with no problem as long as you don't exceed the GCWR of your tow vehicle. I've towed a 20k trailer through the Hill Country of central Texas without any problems with tranny cooling. My Lariat has the digital tranny temp gauge in the "gauges" display, and the tranny temp never got over about 215°, not even close to the 225° red line.


If your pickup has the standard 3.55 axle ratio for a 2013 4x4 with 5.0L engine, then your GCWR results in a tow rating of 7,500 to 8,000 pounds, depending on cab and bed. You'll be at the very max of your tow rating, or maybe exceed it. (Tow rating is GCWR minus a wet and lightly-loaded tow vehicle). So watch that tranny temp gauge like a hawk. Don't allow more than 225°. Or if your pickup doesn't have the gauges display, then watch that idiot tranny temp gauge on the dash extremely closely, and stop and cool off with engine idling at 1,200 RPM if the gauge jumps from the white zone to the yellow zone. Ford has a weird definition of the zones on the idiot gauge. White means go, but yellow means your tranny is overheated, and red means your tranny is probably toast.


If your pickup has 3.73 axle, then your tow rating is over 9,000 pounds, so surely you won't try to tow a trailer that grosses 9,000 pounds back to Alaska.

Back in the early years of the SuperDuty diesel - '99 and 99.5 through the first half of 2000, Ford had inadequate tranny cooling. Lots of folks added a big heat exchanger with a themostatically-controlled fan, and mounted it under the truck. If they maintained one GPM ATF flow, that did the trick.

w0lvez

That is the reason why it needs more fluid because there is thermostatic valve that restricts full fluid flow to the cooler. Small amount of fluid is still flowing to the cooler. The Thermo Bypass Valve prevents over-cooling the tranmission. It function the same way as the coolant thermostat that blocks the flow of coolant to the radiator.

mass-hole

I believe that you can add the transmission cooler from the excursion V10, which is larger than any cooler that comes from the factory on the 11-14 f150s, even the max tow. It looks just like the OEM max tow cooler on my truck but it's something like 13 rows vs 4. There is an install procedure of the ecoboost forum, search "13 row transmission cooler DIY"

The other thing is, since all the trucks pass the transmission fluid through the radiator first, a lower temp thermostat should help assuming you coolant doesn't get too hot as well.

5.0GN tow

The tranny coolers for max tow and regular tow are all 4 row coolers for the 11 to 14 trucks.

Feathermerchant

To ad dI have not heard of an overheated transmission except where the truck was overloaded in hills and at high ambient temps.

ZacSquatch

Awesome, I like this solution.