transmission cooler lines run through radiator?
 

My 2000 F350 does not run the transmission cooler line through the radiator. Is that normal, or did someone put in the wrong radiator before I bought it? When I bought the truck, the lines ran only to the dedicated transmission cooler in front of the radiator, so I added a second cooler. Everything is fine until I am pulling a trailer loaded with toys up an incline at slower than normal speeds. I did this last week, gained about 4000 feet of altitude in 8 miles, dirt road, about 20 miles/hour, and my trans temps went over 250 deg. F. Normally, they don't go much over 190 on the highway.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

John.

I think the OTW cooler started in 01

250 degrees?? :eek: Hope you changed your fluid...

Replace your bypass valve.
It's a pattern failure on the automatics and it's cheap, like $40.00.
Too inexpensive of a part to overlook when trying to diagnose hot trannies.

I thought the OTW was in 00?
Change your fluid soon, or youll be changing a transmission.

The added the OTW cooler during the 2000 MY. Mine has the OWT cooler, March of 2000 build date.

My 2000 has one too. I believe the 1999's are the only year NBS to not have them.

Pop

I know for a fact my early 99 doesn't have one. yellow73bb, I'd opt for a puller or pusher fan for your auxillary cooler, summit has quite a few. OTW cooler would be nice but even in this situation you describe, 20mph - heavy tow - incline, I don't think the OTW cooler would be as beneficial as a good fan.

I'll drop the tranny pan, replace the filter and fluid, and replace the bypass valve. I'm not sure if there is room for a pusher fan there or not. I guess I could mount the aux. cooler somewhere else . . . . .

My late '99 with ZF-6 has one.

I have an 02 F250 7.3, is the small cooler located in the front of the A/C condensor the tranny cooler on mine? Or is in between the condensor and radiator?

The small cooler is for your PS fluid. The cooler between A/C and Radiator is your tranny cooler.

Nope. Ford didn't start installing the radiator cooler until February, 2000, so there are a bunch of 2000 MY trucks out there without one.

Good info to know!

Mine's an 05/00 truck, so I was lucky on this one.

Thanks for the additional.

Pop

Resurrecting this old post. Still overheating every summer. I put a new fan clutch on this last winter, I replaced the bypass valve last summer, I put in the highest capacity tranny cooler I could fit. Today it went up to 230 pulling up a hill.

I'm thinking I'll have a radiator shop put in a OTW radiator.

I had heard somewhere that a bad torque converter could cause the oil to overheat. Is there any truth to this? It locks just fine at highway speeds, so I'm not sure how it would fail.

Any ideas before I start sinking money into this thing?