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Senor Taco,
Here are some pictures of the first prototype installed. There are some modifications to be made on this one that will be on all future pans. The middle pan, from the front crossmember back to the secondary crossmember, will get some beads rolled into it to keep it from fluttering as wind passes over it and the front tray will get a hole with screen or a series of small holes, I have not decided which, to allow air flow over the oil cooler/heater on the front crossmember. I also want to get air flow over the steering rack but have not decided how I will do that. I will probably place one of my air speed meters in front of the rack and see how much airflow I get coming through the front of the truck and over the top of the pans. If it is minimal then I will replicate what I decide for the oil cooler/heater. Next up will be a transmission belly pan. I will pull my fabric catch tray and build off of it using the factory brackets and some lips down the sides and a scooped front to drive air over the AFE trans pan.
Once I have the bugs worked out of the prototype I will build to order if anyone is interested. I am hoping the pricing comes out close to the cost of the factory fabric under trays. Time will tell.
Front tray. I did not have any pop rivets so I just bolted the doubled up leading edge which is glued to keep it from rattling. It sucks to be out of pop rivets when building proyotypes. View from front to back.
I just remembered that my neighbor gave me a OBD2 dongle that will access and reset fault codes along with real time monitoring. I have plugged it in and downloaded an app and now can accurately monitor engine temp in relation to trans temp. I am consistently seeing a 10 degree F trail by the trans with a occasional crossover @ 195F. I have also noticed that this engine hangs right in the 199-204F range. I have seen 212F once during spirited driving on a 95 degree day. A/C on usually keeps the engine <199? What are your experiences? The main concern is to be able to determine radiator replacement when the time comes since I am already at 54,000 miles.
This will be a 2 parter. Started early and ended much later than planned but I did accomplish a lot. A quick oil and filter change followed by dropping the trans pan to make an adjustment to the oil pickup. When I added the AFE trans pan the instructions stated that the pick up extension does not work with all Motorcraft trans filters. If it doesn’t, leave it off. This means 6 extra quarts of oil laying in the bottom of the pan acting as a heat sink but not really moving through the trans. I dropped the pan, pulled the filter off and tried to use the AFE extension on a new Motorcraft filter. It was impossible to keep it in place when installing the pan from a prone position, so back to the drawing board. I had an aluminum cooling hose adapter, SBC to Jag conversion part, that had the correct dimensions and taper and fit the filter and pan much better than the AFE pickup. On it went, in went 13 quarts of LV and off I go on a long test drive. The trans temp is now much more consistent, 194-197 instead of 194-210, with it picking the oil up from deeper in the pan. The last trans temp check was performed when I got back. I let the truck idle and waited for the fans to kick in. At 208 engine temp on they went and I watch the trans temp drop from 195 to 188. The larger cooler from a Raptor or 3.3 XL ($52.00 delivered) is doing its job. The one concern is the lack of engine temp change from the time the fans kicked on to the time they kicked off. They cycled off and the engine temp only dropped to 206. My 40 years with BMW would have me leaning towards a partially restrictedradiator but this is my first shuttered vehicle and no one was using shutters when I retired. Everything was wide open and I really expected to see a bigger and quicker temp drop. There may be a more efficient radiator in my future but for now I will consider this normal unless I experience any issues: derate after heatsoak after a gas stop, trans temp not recovering after a long grade, etc. during my next long distance tow.
Hopped in my neighbor’s 2018 FX4 RCSB,5.0 tonight. My 17 has 54,000 and his has 33,000 on it. His engine temp reacts a little quicker to heatsoak than mine, does not get as warm (208 to his 205) when left on extended idle and reacts quicker to the fans but you can flip flop the trans and engine temps between the two trucks. Mine will, under normal driving conditions, run at 201 / 195 (engine / trans) and his runs 195 / 201. I am thinking that the multiple winter trips to Minnesota (heavily salted roads) to see Mom may have compromised the fins on the aluminum radiator. I’ll shoot some detergent on to the front of the radiator and then rinse it from the back side to see if that helps.
