mylittletony
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,342
Club RR Member Number: 84
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After driving my Fairlane quite hard around the track at Goodwood I encountered some slipping on the way home when pulling off... I think this may have been caused by a combination of factors: - Low fluid caused partially by me not checking and a dreadful dipstick which was really hard to read
- Getting hot by driving it hard round Goodwood
- Picking up some muck from the gearbox during it's workout or part of the lining of the aforementioned dreadful dipstick
I am intending to address all 3 items by buying a better dipstick with a hard tube rather than a flexi braided one, new fluid and filter and an additional cooler. The gearbox currently uses a cooler in built in the rad, with 8mm hard lines from the box and shot lengths of rubber to isolate any movements.  The new cooler has 1/2" connections.  Can anyone help with whether I should keep the in rad cooler and plumb them in series, new cooler after the rad? My plan is to keep the rad feed side as is, take the rad out through a 90 o, into an adaptor up to 1/2" hose, into the cooler, then out of the cooler, through another adaptor and back into the return line. The cooler will be positioned in front of the radiator. It is ok to step up/down from 1/2" pipe to 8mm? |
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Rich
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 6,248 
Club RR Member Number: 160
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Automatic Gearbox Cooler plumbingRich
@foxmcintyre
Club Retro Rides Member 160
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The one in the radiator is more a temperature conditioner than a cooler. It’s more to bring the atf up to temp than maintain it low. Jeep fitted an air to oil cooler as part of the tow pack on the XJ which was fitted after the water-to-oil unit in the radiator.
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Common consensus in hot rod world is to skip the in rad cooler(heater) and just plumb in the trans rad. I think this is to avoid corrosion issues with old rads as water can get into the trans fluid if the tube rots out.
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mylittletony
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,342
Club RR Member Number: 84
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Cheers chaps.
My first plan was to just take those hoses under the rad into the new cooler with adaptors to step up the hose size. But then I read a page suggesting it was best to run through both
Seeing as I'm extremely unlikely to use this is anything other than clement weather I don't think I'll need the heater/conditioner
Any comments on pipe sizing?
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ferny
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 984
Club RR Member Number: 13
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As said, the rad connection is a heat exchanger rather than a cooler. If you add it before the radiator then the one in the radiator should bring it back up near coolant temperature by robbing some of its heat - bonus summer cooling? If you add it afterwards then it'll be going into your gearbox at a lower temperature than your coolant which is probably below optimum working temperatures.
My Acclaim had the same setup and after the radiator needed replacing a couple of years after having it recored I decided to ditch it. Space was tight and new Acclaim radiators were expensive (£200+) so I fitted one off a Skoda for £35. It had no means to connect the gearbox so I bought a cheap motorbike oil cooler off eBay and fitted it in a area which was solid behind so no real airflow would take place. I had to add on the cost of an aluminium header tank but it all still came in under £75.
This was a good few years ago now and I've had no problems with it.
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My Range Rover only has the oil to air cooler and seems to be fine, unless you are planning an artic trip I would go with just the oil to air one, stepping up and down the hoses shouldn't be a problem.
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mk2cossie
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,953
Club RR Member Number: 77
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If it were me, I'd just plumb the autobox lines straight to the oil cooler and leave out the radiator heat exchanger. ATF being too cool is less of an issue than it being too hot  And also takes out the possibility of ATF and coolant mixing and killing possibly both engine and transmission! Had a XK8 in at work recently, and the heat exchanger in the rad of that had split, causing the cooling system to be filled with this...  That was in the heater matrix, and was NOT fun to extract  |
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mk2cossie
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,953
Club RR Member Number: 77
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Oh, and try and get some oil line elbows of the same size as the current transmission lines are. The less joins and steps in the new lines, the better  |
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Jun 12, 2022 19:20:20 GMT
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i have done a few automatic gearbox conversions on a Rover P5B. The original 3 speed BW35 is replaced by a 4 speed 4ZF HP22 and i skip the cooler in the radiator and replace this by a seperate oil cooler. I went to a hydraulic shop and bought a length of hydraulic pipe, a set of hoses and fittings and from some large old bearings, i made a pipe bender and made all the pipes. Used some hoses between the cooler pipes and the sunframe pipes   Peter |
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Jun 12, 2022 22:29:57 GMT
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i have done a few automatic gearbox conversions on a Rover P5B. The original 3 speed BW35 is replaced by a 4 speed 4ZF HP22 and i skip the cooler in the radiator and replace this by a seperate oil cooler. I went to a hydraulic shop and bought a length of hydraulic pipe, a set of hoses and fittings and from some large old bearings, i made a pipe bender and made all the pipes. Used some hoses between the cooler pipes and the sunframe pipes Peter Hi, A neat installation and has the added bonus of stiffening up the slam panel. Colin |
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mylittletony
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,342
Club RR Member Number: 84
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Hi Peter Thanks for the reply, that's a really neat job! As you can see I have the same cooler, I decided yesterday on a location which wasn't as easy as I had first thought. I don't have the means or time to bend hard lines, my existing hard lines currently run from the box up to the front of the engine. From there new rubber hoses will now run around the radiator and into the cooler which will be in front of the rad. I did look at vertically mounting it like you have but I couldn't easily find mounting points... |
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Jun 13, 2022 12:52:50 GMT
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Already having the hard lines and only needing hoses is a bit easier. I looked into that but i was afraid the hoses would rub against an edge and would start to leak. You cannot use normal tube bending tools as the radius is too large so i had to make my own bender. In the mean time, i already did 3 conversions so it got a fair bit of use.
Peter
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