qdeezie

So, I see that my truck has a factory cooler on it and it looks to be a decent size. Does this factory cooler do a sufficient job of keeping the ATF cool?

Also, are there any upgrades? Such as one that may come on an F250 or F350 that are direct bolt ins?

I am not exactly itching to upgrade my cooler, but I want to do my due diligence and see if the factory unit is truly sufficient or if I need to step it up.

nrivera04

Works well for mine... I can drag a 26’ camper w/slide around and stay around 170-180 according to my trans temp gauge. 3.55 gear set and 4x4. Camper weight around 6K.

If you want to do due diligence, I’d recommend installing a trans temp gauge if you haven’t already. Heat is gonna be your biggest trans killer behind failing to do regular service on it.

PerryB

If you have an external cooler in front of the radiator, then you actually have two because all the trucks have a primary cooler in the cold-side tank of the radiator. If this is the case, you have all the cooling you'll ever need.

redfishtd

I'm in hot fl and I tow more than 5500 . I have a gauge strapped to my cooler to check on it . I change the trans pan to drain type and have serviced it several times .You can buy a cooling oversize pan if you like ,add a temp gauge.
It must be kept cool and serviced. Don't push it hard when heavy towing just like us slow down esp on grades.

qdeezie

Thank you guys! I appreciate it! One less thing to worry about! I recently ordered the Dorman trans pan with the drain plug to make things easy.

I am looking forward to my first drain and fill. Will likely do a cheap Mercon V to begin just to flush it out then upgrade to a synthetic after about 10k-20k miles on the cheap stuff.

1971 442 W30 conv

Greetings.
Drain and fill removes less than half of fluid unless you have truck running and replace fluid through the line going into trans cooler at the same time, otherwise you are only draining the pan. I have 333,000 miles on my 08 Lariat 5.4 4X4 and tow 6500 pound trailer often. I have my trans flushed with out cleaner by dealer every 30,000 since new and am just now starting to feel some chatter in the trans which I think is pretty good considering the work this truck does. And yes heat is the killer but I just stick with all Motocraft fluids and filters.

redfishtd

Its not cheap but any other magic stuff may kill the trans.

qdeezie

What temperature gauge are you all using for your automatic transmissions?

nrivera04

Mine is a VDO 1/4 sweep gauge. Range is like 100-300 degrees. Make sure your sender is 1/8 NPT thread

SpiderBorland

Just this past weekend I was going to install a transmission cooler into my 96 F150 XL 5.0, and low and behold, it already had one. Looked like it was factory, too. I mean, I'm no expert by any stretch, but nothing I had read about this truck indicated that it even had one! The other comments here seem to indicate that this should be more than ample for my needs.