| Modifications, Repairs, & Upgrades |
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Transmission Cooler Installation - [return to main mods page] In order to prolong the life of your automatic transmission, it is a good idea to install a transmission cooler. 9 out of 10 transmissions fail due to overheated fluids. The $50 for the transmission cooler is cheap insurance against having to replace the transmission at $2,000. I chose the B&M racing transmission cooler (p/n 70268 SuperCooler 19,000 GVW 11"x7-1/2"x3/4") because I like the stacked plate design. It is very solidly constructed and will easily deflect any road debris that may happen to hit it, unlike the tube and fin types which are easy to bend and distort. I got it from jegs and the kit comes with all the parts necessary to mount the cooler(hoses, clamps, adapters, etc). The radiator in the MCSS has 3/8 fittings and these are supplied in the kit. The cooler should be plumbed in line with the return to transmission line.Tools Required
1. 13mm open end wrench Extra Parts required
1. 3/8 fitting, 90º with barb. I chose to put the car on ramps, which was not necessary for the install but made the working area a little higher and thus easier on the back. Remove the plastic cover from the top of the engine compartment where the hood latch it. Remove the lower air dam from underneath the vehicle. This will give you a little more light to work with and if you drop any tools, they will fall to the ground and be easier to get. Cooler Attachment This part is a pain in the butt so be prepared!! I scraped 7 out of 10 fingers doing this part. The kit is supplied with plastic pieces that get inserted thru the mounting holes in the cooler, thru fins of the radiator and then thru the AC condenser. Once you get thru the radiator and AC, you put the rear of the tie-down on the slide it towards the radiator fins (kinda like a wire tie). Then cut off the excess. Sounds easy enough until you try to use them and realize the dual cooling fans on the rear of the radiator make it impossible. The alternative is to come from the read towards the front (AC, RAD, Cooler) reaching between the fan blades. This is very difficult and took me the most time to accomplish. The major problem is that the fins do not line up and you can't get to the spot that you need to get to hit the mounting holes in the cooler. Creating the paths from the front helped but it was still a pain to get them to line up correctly. I think I created 3 new swear words during my 2 hours trying to do this. Afterwords I saw a post that used a straw to guide the plastic thru the fins, which probably would have worked. Make sure you mount the cooler with the fittings facing up. Once you get the top two mounting holes secured there is a hole in the bottom radiator support that you can wire-tie to. You need to drill another hole on the other side to do the same thing. It isn't that bad as the radiator does not go down that far and there is some room but still be carefull. It would really suck to drill a hole in your radiator. Another possible option would be to fabricate custom brackets to attach the cooler to. This would also be difficult as there is no supports in the area that could be easily drilled for mounting screws.
Cooler Plumbing This is the easiest part of the whole job. You need to unscrew the OE transmission line from the top of the radiator. Insert the 90º fitting into the radiator side and the supplied female fitting into the OE line. If you look next to the headlight assembly there is a piece of flexible rubber material. The new lines are going to be run behind the headlight assembly and thru the flexible material to the cooler. Running the lines this way means they are up and away from road debris and any associated problems with running them under the car. It would not be a good thing to hit a curb and spill your ATF all over the road. Measure the supplied rubber tubing for the proper length, making sure not to crimp the tubing when you bend it. Attach one end of the cooler to the radiator fitting and the other to the return line to the transmission. I took a couple of snapshots of the cooler plumbing and the fittings used to tap into the OE supply lines.
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