ATF cooler and position

[Sparkie67]

Hi

I have started towing, and as yet not had any problems, just noted it seemed to struggle on an incline and holding 2nd gear what seemed like an eternity. The load weighs in at about 1500kg.
Anyways, I am thinking of adding an ATF cooler and bypassing the rad cooler. I know there has been many threads and conversations, but has anyone come up with a good size cooler and position for a gen 3 when taking the rad cooler out of the equation.

Thanks
Andy

[andyverran]

yes...shokenore

http://www.hiluxsurf.co.uk/showthread.php?t=81789

[tweak'e]

obviously that surf has a body lift so your milage may vary.
i'm not a fan of putting radiators that far forward. a minor hit on the front would cause serious damage to the cooler and consequently the gearbox.
back against the radiator/aircon would be better. fit the biggest you can and make sure the outlet is at the top.
if your worried about it getting to cold you can get thermostats for them.

[shokenore]

obviously that surf has a body lift so your milage may vary.
i'm not a fan of putting radiators that far forward. a minor hit on the front would cause serious damage to the cooler and consequently the gearbox.
back against the radiator/aircon would be better. fit the biggest you can and make sure the outlet is at the top.
if your worried about it getting to cold you can get thermostats for them.

The milage of these vehicles is meh but comparable to my Vito go figure.

I disagree with your comments about the cooler size especially coupled with having it fitted right in front of the radiator.
You are effectively increasing the amount of work subjected to the cooling system, which seems contradictory to having a separate cooler in the first place.


The cooler was purposely moved away from the rad to eliminate as much heat as possible from the oil cooler being transmitted to the coolant system, almost the whole idea of having the oil cooler fitted was to achieve this.
Why have a very hot oil cooler planted right in front of what you wanted to keep cool?


The minor damage aspect also is curious, what may not be obvious from the pictures is how far forward the tow hook protrudes past the oil cooler.

I know some may think it is far from perfect but it ticks all my boxes and after a considerable amount of head scratching and trial fitting this is the best position for me.

[tweak'e]

I disagree with your comments about the cooler size especially coupled with having it fitted right in front of the radiator.
You are effectively increasing the amount of work subjected to the cooling system, which seems contradictory to having a separate cooler in the first place.

The cooler was purposely moved away from the rad to eliminate as much heat as possible from the oil cooler being transmitted to the coolant system, almost the whole idea of having the oil cooler fitted was to achieve this.
Why have a very hot oil cooler planted right in front of what you wanted to keep cool?

The minor damage aspect also is curious, what may not be obvious from the pictures is how far forward the tow hook protrudes past the oil cooler.

if the cooler is in front of the radiator, whether its 1" away or 12", its still heating the air going to the radiator and reducing the cooling ability of the radiator slightly.
being at the bottom of the radiator is worse than higher up, simply because your heating up already cooled water. if its placed at the top you reducing radiator cooling ability a bit but it has the rest of the radiator below to compensate for that.
either way you do its still far better than the stock setup that heats up the cooling water going to the engine.

damage wise, i looked at this when doing the IC as theres lots of pics on this site about fitting an IC in that position.
if you have a look at other vehicles who do that setup, a classic example is ford courier where they have a low forward mounted IC, the IC gets hit very often and a minor hit can result in a dead engine/gearbox.

[shokenore]

I would, again have to disagree.
I carefully monitored my coolant temps before carrying out the oil cooler mod.
The new oil cooler has taken all the heat from the coolant system, which is what I was after.
Whilst I understand what you are saying I believe that the position of the oil cooler away from the radiator the air pulled through the oil cooler has no direct effect on radiator temperatures as there is enough ambient air to mix with, and as it is at the bottom and at the coolest part of the radiator if there was a localized heating effect it is negated by the amount of water flowing through the radiator back to the block.

As to the damage aspect my Vito with a front mounted intercooler has just clocked 137k and is in ok condition.
My oil cooler does have a alloy gauze cover over it.
But I do take you points on-board .

[tweak'e]

I would, again have to disagree.
I carefully monitored my coolant temps before carrying out the oil cooler mod.
The new oil cooler has taken all the heat from the coolant system, which is what I was after.

absolutely, it will work fine. i doubt you could do worse than the factory setup.