Some of you may have seen my thread awhile back where I mentioned that I had reached the limit of my ecoboost pulling my toyhauler.

Long story short I was pulling a 10,000lb toyhauler in 97 degree temps up steep grades at altitude. The worst instance happened at low speeds because of extreme washboarding causing wheel slippage. Power was adequate but the truck absolutely did not like the heat and I had to pull over.

To the point: What would you recommend to keep temps down?

Off the top of my head I am thinking these in no particular order:

1. Redline water wetter (already done)
2. 170 degree thermostat
3. Larger or secondary oil cooler.
4. Aluminum high capacity finned transmission pan.
5. Aftermarket intercooler.

I would like to hear if anyone else has run into this issue and if so what was done, and did it work?

 

Option 3, 4, 5 would be the ones I would look to next. Personally I would leave the tstat as is- sometimes changing thermostats can have adverse effects. By reducing or managing some of the parasitic heat, you will naturally help the cooling system manage its own heat.

 

If you don't have the max tow pkg, then you probably exceeded the GCWR of your truck. The GCWR tells you the max weight you can gross when towing without overheating anything in your drivetrain.



Your EcoBoost doesn't have an oil cooler. So you need to add one. Easiest way is to buy a "sandwich adapter" that fits between the oil filter and the block. That adapter is the source for the hot oil and the place where the cooled oil returns. Then plumb that adapter into a large heat exchanger (transmission cooler or oil cooler) mounted in an air path - preferably in front of the radiator. Here's one example of a sandwich adapter:
http://www.tdperformance.com/Oil-Coo...dwich-Adapters



No. The Ford OEM tranny engineers have advised that those highly-advertised pans are mostly hype with little effectiveness. They take longer to heat up, but they are also slower to cool down, and in the meantime do little to get rid of tranny heat. Much better plan is to replace your OEM oil-to-air (OTA) tranny cooler (heat exchanger) with a bigger one.



No. Assuming you have the 3.73 axle ratio, your EcoBoost power train has all the power you need to drag that trailer over the mountain pass. So you don't need more power if you don't exceed the GCWR of your F-150. But you do need to get rid of the excess heat. So in addition to the oil cooler and bigger tranny cooler, you need to replace the radiator with the biggest one that will fit the hole.

 

If you don't have max tow, then definitely get the bigger radiator.

 

The max tow pkg and the regular tow pkg both use the same "upgraded" radiator. And it should be enough cooling capacity if you don't exceed the GCWR of the F-150.

 

As understand from the earlier post you didn't think of putting it in 4 wheel drive to help you get up that 8-9% grade. If you would have, you might have not spun a wheel and been able to go up without overheating the truck.
I'm just sayin'...helpin' the situation...10K load and 8-9% grade is pretty EXTREME...

 

It has the max tow package.

And yes, don't remind my of the 4wd option.....must have been temporarily insane to not remember that.

 

Smokeywren - the purpose of an upgraded intercooler in my case is not for power, but to prevent heatsoak. The factory intercooler is not that efficient and heatsoak pretty quickly under full load. So when you get to extreme conditions you are heating air instead of cooling it before it enters the intake.

 

I don't believe this is true. The Max Tow has more tubes in the radiator.

 

Maybe so, I haven't looked. But the Order Guide says both the regular tow package and the max tow package includes upgraded radiator, with no indication that they are not the same upgraded radiator..