Transmission fluid temps
 

Anyone know what the range is on these temps. Reason I ask is because long story short My truck did not come with a factory tow package and I have added the hitch and seven pin wiring, I am lacking the HD trans cooler. Recently purchased a travel trailer and am a little worried about getting the tranny too hot. I have an Edge tuner and set the gauge to read tranny fluid temp. Without the trailer I have been seeing temps that range in the 130's to 150's, with the trailer I have been seeing temps in the high 160's, with a spike to 176 when going up a hill. I plan to add the tranny cooler but cash is little tight at the moment. Just wondering how hot is too hot.

From what I understand, anything over 225 is too hot. I'm in the same boat as you. I bought one of the few trucks built without the tow package. I have pulled my 3000lb boat up hills for extended peroids of time and seen the temps go up to 188 (however, I do have 3.55 gears and 33" tires). I found a factory cooler on Ebay for 140 including shipping. It should be here tomorrow. I will let you know what kind of difference it makes.

I have a 2007 XLT SCAB 5.4L 3.73LS 2WD with tow pkg. I have been on level 2 Edge tuner for about 2 years. Due to my business I regularly tow a trailer with 3000 to 5000 lbs load. For most of the flat ground the Trany Temp is around 150 but in heavy traffic the temp will spike up to 180 / 190. Going up the hill with load only increses the temp a little bit if the traffic is light. I think the important factor is depending on how much ram air is available to cool the trany cooler.

anything under 210 and you are fine.


can't find the picture now, but U-haul used to have a very good chart showing tranny temps vs. tranny life.


to sum it up, 210F and less is normal temps, and you should see no negative aspects on your tranny.



or, I cannot remember who, but a member here on FTE installed a e-fan from a Motorcycle onto his tranny cooler. Pretty sure he reported about 20F lower tranny temps.

I found this;
http://www.txchange.com/heatchrt.jpg
"The effect is also cumulative. Short term exposure to high heat levels (or even prolonged exposure to moderate heat) can break down the oil to the point where even very short episodes of overheating will lead to failure."
http://web.archive.org/web/200503040...FluidChart.jpg

Sweet, thanks for the info I think I will be fine for short trips for now, but when I go far away and in the dead of summer I think I will feel more comfortable having the cooler, although it does not seem to make a huge diff. Deisele75 please let me know what kind of temps you see after the install.

Will do!!! I will have it installed this weekend, but i'm not really going to test it until Memorial Day. I'll be pulling the toy hauler up to the mountains.

That was me.. I found a suzuki gsx 1100 oil cooler fan on e-bay for 20.00 i made a bracket and installed it with a toggle switch so i can turn it on and off. This was a big add on for me.. I use it on hot days or long trips. We towed our 30 ft toy hauler with quads and gear in it close to 8k lbs to Florida and back and i ran about on adverage 170-185 on the temp gauge. Now i have 3.73's turning 35 inch tires...edge 3-inch exhaust, throttle body spacer, K&N air intake... My truck dose just fine.

Mark

Ok. I got my cooler on and took the trip up to Utah. My toyhauler loaded up weighs about 6500lbs. I have 3.55 gears and 33" tires. Coming up from Cedar City up to Duck Creek was a 9% grade all the way up to 10,000ft.

I did have to stop about 2/3 of the way up the hill because my tranny crept up to 235. I can only imagine how many times i would have had to stop with the 4 pass cooler.

My gear/Tire combo is really stupid. I think if I put 4.10 or 4.56 gears in there it would make a big difference. Because there were times when i was wrapping at 4500RPM in first gear and it just would not shift. Were as my buddy was right behind me pulling the same load in second gear.

Oh. By the way. The tranny cooler upgrade was probably the easyist thing I have ever done under the hood of a car. So easy your wife could do it. If you guys want some details let me know.

Considering your gears, that 235 isn't so bad. If you are measuring temp from the built in sensor, that's 50-100 degrees cooler than what's coming out of the converter, so you were smart to stop. Were you running in 3rd, OD locked out? With those gears, I might have slowed down and gone into 2nd and tried to get the converter locked up.

With the edge box you know you can adjust the gears to match the tires? I have 35's under mine and pulling our 30 ft toy hauler loaded up i'm close to 8000 lbs. We did this trip from Jersey to FL back in jan. and the truck did very well.. i think i may have touched 200 on the trans temp a few times but most of the time i was running around the 170-180 mark. The best thing i did was add the fan to the trans cooler. I have 54K on my truck and i bet you 30k is pulling a trailer of some sort. Weather it be the toy hauler or the 17 ft car trailer it's always working. The fan was not the easiest to install but i mad it happen and it was worth the 22.00 off of e-bay for it.

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Muddedprairie: "With the edge box you know you can adjust the gears to match the tires? "

Ummm? Don't you mean you can adjust the odometer/speedometer to match the tires and any gearing changes? I' love to be able to change axle ratios at the push of a button, but alas.... ( : < (

Jim,

Yes thats what i ment. Thanks for clearing that up.

Mark:-drink

When I was going up that grade, I could not get out of second. There were times where i couldn't get out of first. It was working pretty hard going up that mountain.

Muddedprairie: That toy hauler is really light for a 30 footer. Thats awsome. I'm sitting at about 6500lbs loaded, and thats a 21 footer.