I have had the truck sitting for almost 2 weeks now and live in the Midwest. It is about 35F outside today and finally got to drive it. When I started the truck and let it warm up for about 3 minutes I backed out and started driving. in total the engine ran 6- 8 minutes and the transmission temp moved off cold but the engine was still reading cold. Is this normal in this truck? Mine is a 5.4 gasser with the 3.73 rear. Thanks for any comments.

 

Yup, that's completely normal.

The transmission temperature "gauge" is nothing more than a glorified idiot light. It's a little smarter than the oil pressure "gauge" that can only ever read one value, but not by very much. It'll start moving from all the way left to the normal zone in the first ten minutes of your trip. It'll only ever move to the right of normal if it starts to approach the danger zone of 230 degrees.

It takes a much longer to warm up a transmission compared to the engine, the gauge is programmed to make it appear more normal to the average Joe who doesn't understand this. Your truck is performing as designed.

 

The gauge will read in the middle of normal when the trans is at 50F. It doesn't move again until it moves to yellow at 230F. That's still quite a ways from the danger zone, which starts at 250F.

 

Sounds great. Thank you for the information.