Ok I’m looking for a little advice here
This is my problem
A few months ago I’m Towing my 23 foot Travel Trailer around 5000 lbs uphill out of Vegas in the heat of summer about 110 degrees
I didn’t know at the time it was a bad idea to tow with the Overdrive turned on so it was on
I have an Edge Evo Tuner so I can monitor my transmission temp
My tranny temp hit a high of 230 degrees scaring the hell out of me
My questions are

1 was the high tranny temp caused by the overdrive being on?
If so would a larger tranny cooler help I know the Vegas heat made it worse but I’m thinking now This whole thing was caused by me towing wrong

2 would towing with overdrive on hurt the tranny in other ways?
It’s nice to have 4th gear available when the road is flat even if only sometimes I can turn it off before it gets too hot by watching the tranny temp 4th gear would help my MPG I get 6 to 9 towing with overdrive on I can’t imagine what it would be going 65 in 3rd gear

Truck is an 2005 F-150 Lariat Crew Cab 4x4 5.4L 3.73 gear
Thanks for any Help

 

welcome to the forum.

i just towed my race car to vegas this past september when i moved here (what part of vegas are you in?)

230 is way too hot. i know i will be watching my tranny temps really close this summer and if they dont stay where i like them, im buying a bigger cooler with a fan on it. fwiw, anytime i hit a flat spot, i turn od on and just watch the temps. so far so good

 

Thanks I’ve been reading a lot here before making this post I’ve found a lot of answers to other questions too

230 scared the living %$#@ out of me too I thought I burned the tranny up
But reading up on it you don’t really hurt the tranny until it hits 250 that’s when the rubber seals start to break down but anything over 200 will start to break down the fluid I had that changed right after this whole ordeal

At the time I had no idea the overdrive could have been the cause I just figured the tranny cooler was too small and found this site searching for larger coolers got to love the web

Now I’m thinking of taking the trailer out for a drive to test this out although it’s not very hot out right now I figure I can keep note of the difference in temps with it on and off just to see

I just want to know if heat would be the only issue before I go destroying anything

I’ve also started running Z Max in both the motor and tranny
I haven’t noticed any difference really but if Carroll Shelby promotes it I’ll give it a try

I’m in Southeast Vegas close Henderson by the way

 

Pulling 5000 lbs up hill in 110 degrees is gonna make a tranny toasty. I doubt your truck ever had the guits to pull the hills in overdrive. A larger tranny cooler helps. I recently put a larger 1 on mine. I mounted it on the front of the radioator right behind the grill. My tranny runs 15 degrees cooler now.

 

What tranny cooler did you use I been trying to find one that will fit the stock mount

 

X2 I'd like to know as well.

 

I don't know the brand ill look on it tomorrow to see if if I can find a name on it. I was gonna mount mine where the stock one is but I would have had to fabricate a bracket and didn't want to fool with it. You can get little connector/snaps to attach it to the radiator. It worked out real good.

 

Did your tranny stay in OD going up the hill, or did it drop down during the climb? As long as the tranny downshifted and did not hunt gears, running with the gearshift in OD was not a problem.

 

Thinking back a lot is making sense now
My problem actually started before I started up the mountain
heading north out of Vegas is all uphill but only slightly just enough to make it hunt gears and I remember it not being able to settle on a gear
I didn’t think too much of it cause I was climbing a slight incline pulling a trailer made perfect sense it was searching for the right gear
once I turned to go up the mountain I stopped and took the tow tune off I thought at the time that may have been the problem cause I had just got my Edge Evo then I let it idle a while letting it cool down once I started up the hill it didn’t hunt for gears anymore and actually cooled off a bit was still over 200 I think it hovered between 210 and 215 also the air got cooler as I climbed so I was thinking the tranny cooler just couldn’t keep up
I haven’t put the tow tune back on till yesterday thinking that was part of the problem my Evo was just a really expensive tranny temp gauge
Sucked too cause it did tow better with the tune on shifts are so much more solid and the truck just seems to have so much more pep
Now after finding this forum and reading a lot of the stuff here I’m going to do the gotts mod and looking at a magnaflow exhaust haven’t decided if I want to go all magnaflow or do just a muffler with a new stock duel exhaust got some more reading to do first

 

I would change the tranny Fluid after it ran that hot....