For a cooler running engine...make sure your fan is working properly (especially if a clutch fan)...have your fan shroud in place (very important)...and maybe run a cooler thermostat (I'm running a 160 in mine)...If your cooling system is flushed and clean, run a little less anti-freeze. Water will transfer heat better than antifreeze and I normally run only a 10-15% mixture in mine. Just enough to not freeze when the temps drop to 20 and enough to keep a good rust inhibitor in the cooling system...Also, add two bottles of Redline's Water Wetter. It will cost 7.95 a bottle, but it works great. Other areas that affect your temperature are timing and fuel mixture. If your timing is too advanced, you will experience a slight pinging on acceleration or under load and your engine will run hotter. If your fuel mixture is too lean, your engine will run hotter also. All those things need to work together to get the most efficient use of your cooling system and maximize power.

 

Guys, Ron,

Thanks for all the information!

Sorry I haven't replied, I'd already left for home, and I got my wife, we went out there just to look. It turns out it's electric brakes. Boy, my wife fell in love with that camper, along with my kids.. but we've decided that we're going to wait for a couple more weeks yet. Since there's a camper show coming up in Mankato..might find a deal there.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get that Reese hitch and get it installed, Class III hitch, also electrick brake controller, all the wiring done, might as well!

Boy all that talk about keeping the tranny cool makes me wanna hide under a rock! :P

Is there a way to find out if your tranny gets too hot? I mean, it sounds like alot of work just to keep the tranny cool... You know, we don't veer out too far from our place whenever we go camping, we'd always go out to my wife's sister's cabin out by a lake which is about 35 miles every weekend for the past 3 years we'd been doing that. We just got tired of sleeping in a tent.

So thinking about it..I know I should get a cooler for the tranny, but I think it would be allright for a short distance to the lake from our place. Just to make sure I'm not overheating the tranny, is there a way that you'd tell if it's get too warm? Like putting your hand underneath and feeling it hot? Is there a guage reading that you can buy and simply install like where the plug stop is on the top, where you fill up the trans fluid in? Sort of like a mower gas guage, you know where it's easy to read, from E to F? Is there such thing like that where you'd take out the plug and screw in a special plug with a wiring that comes out to a guage mounted on your dash to read the temp? Is there such a thing out there like that? I probably sound ridiculous for typing like that...lol.. If there isn't, why don't you guys make something like that? And sell em? Make some MONEY!?!? :7

So for the time being, I'll get that hitch installed, but on this one, I'm gonna let the pros do it...not me..this one is a little out of my legue...

Thanks guys! Ron, thanks for telling me the ratio..I think that's good news!

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 18-Apr-02 AT 12:32 PM (EST)]Hey dew de dew !

Regadrding tranny temp reading:
They have little animal that runs down to the Transmission and sticks his finger in the oil,if it screams the tranny is overheating .

Now back to the future !

Having a look at this article may shed some light on the subject for you.

If you look around this page you find installation tips,etc.

I've installed these in 1/2 hr.

http://www.pkcs.com/GS-CoolerKit.html



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I would definitely put a cooler on if you are going to pull that big of a trailer. You can usually smell the tranny when it gets hot, but by then it's a little too late. You should pull your dipstick out of your tranny right now and check the condition of the fluid. It should be bright pink if it's new. If it's been awhile since it was changed it will be a dark maroon color. If somebody has been towing and overheating the tranny, the fluid will be brown and smell burnt.

I get the impression the really nice cooler kits have a thermostatic switch that directs the fluid either to the cooler or the radiator depending on the temp of the tranny oil. I read somewhere that running the oil in the radiator is beneficial in the winter time because the oil comes up to temp faster which makes the tranny operate better in cold weather.