So I bought a trans cooler and the kit came with one hose that is about 3' long with female connection on both ends and a male adapter piece. Question is how do I run the lines? How do I tie it into the radiator? The trans cooler has two ports you know where lines can be connected ya know.
for mine i just bypassed the radiator and put her in front of the condenser mine is like 18X12 inches made by hayden. ill see if i can post a picture
also I don't have a factory radiator I have a 3 core with no built in trans cooler I did that because I want the radiator to only be used for cooling the engine and i ran the line on the drivers side of the radiator between the radiator and the core support like i said ill try and post a pic
When I put trans coolers on customers vehicles, I always get a Hayden cooler from O'reilly's. Any good trans cooler kit will come with a mounting kit like in this picture
Mount the cooler up against the condensor or radiator if you have no condensor. I try to mount the cooler to where the lines point down toward the ground, but if you have fitment issues trying that, don't worry about it, no big deal. The kits I get also come with about 2 feet of hose. I simply cut the cooler lines as close as possible to the radiator then cut the rubber hose to the 2 lengths I need and done.
OR, you can use the external trans cooler along with the one in the radiator.
Keep one trans cooler line attached to the radiator cooler, and cut the other about 3 inches away from the radiator. Run a hose from the 3 inch piece off the radiator to one end of the new external cooler, then run a line from the other end of the external cooler to the line that was cut that runs back to the transmission.
so if I want to run both the cooler in the radiator and the external cooler cut one of the hard lines that run to the radiator and attach a piece of the rubber hose that came with the kit to it? Should I also cut the rubber hose that has 2 female ends or should I get another length of rubber hose?
I don't know the in and out lines on an aod, you will need to check. But I would put the extra cooler in series after the radiator cooler, and go in the bottom and out the top connection ,then bac to the trans. You can use the zip tie kit per the above or make up some brackets from some flat stock from Home Depot or Lowes.
Someone here will post the aod in/out config I hope.
there are advantages and dis advantages to both the tube and fin and stacked plate dont get it twisted. a tube and fin can be smaller and provide better cooling but may have more pressure drop off due to so many bends which i have noticed to be small with my cooler maybe 1 psi.
I just saw my trans guy yesterday. (Picked up my AOD) He said that it really doesnt matter how cool the fluid gets unless you are starting the car in cold winter like conditions. Since i don't drive my car in the winter i don't even bother with running fluid threw the radiator. Hes been building transmissions over 30 years and is semi-retired. This guy knows his stuff.
AOD Return line is the bottom one BTW.
Tru Cool Stacked plate coolers have bypass channels to allow colder fluid to pass more easily. This is what most guys with large trucks towing campers use. The only benefit of tube and fin is price. Transmissions aren't cheap to fix so why cheap out on the part that makes or breaks 90% of transmission failures.
Personal experience.....
I ran 2 fairly large tube and fin coolers zip tied to eachother with my Manual valve body AOD. (Creates alot of heat) After changing to a large stacked plate design rarely see my transmission guy except when i snap something. But none of the "PURPLE" planetary gears and random other parts.