trans cooler

[jake91]

i know that they help lengthen the life of your trans and arnt that expensive so what is a good one for a lq1 car.

 

also

how long do they take to install

and is there anything else i need to buy to ad one

[douellette]

i know that they help lengthen the life of your trans and arnt that expensive so what is a good one for a lq1 car.

 

also

how long do they take to install

and is there anything else i need to buy to ad one

 

i bought a B&M one and have yet to install it

 

i think everything you'll need comes in the kit though.

[1990lumina]

You might need a length of hose and some clamps depending on the cooler you buy.

 

I would probably run it in series with the factory cooler in the rad. It helps warm the fluid up in winter - although that probably doesn't apply to you lol.

[jake91]

mid day no but it the winter late nights and early mornings a bit it can get into the low to mid 20s here

[digitaloutsider]

I bought one for an RV at Pep Boys to put on the Regal

 

I think all I needed to buy was some hose. To top off the overkill, it's Good Year extreme high-pressure fuel line. hahaha

[xtremerevolution]

I bought one for an RV at Pep Boys to put on the Regal

 

I think all I needed to buy was some hose. To top off the overkill, it's Good Year extreme high-pressure fuel line. hahaha

 

Same here. I bought the biggest one you could find.

 

In the cold winter days, it takes my trans about 5 minutes of highway driving to warm up to the point where the TCC will engage, but it doesn't bother me much at all.

[Galaxie500XL]

I bought a factory cooler for my '95 LQ1 Cutlass at the junkyard. It came from a 3.8 Reagal. It had the virtues of being cheap, and it fit in the factory location.

 

It takes a while, though. Keep in mind, your Cutlass doesn't breathe through a grill, but from under the bumper. There's a box in front of the radiator to force air that comes from under the bumper into the radiator. Unfortunately, the cooler needs to be INSIDE that box, if you're replicating the factory location, which is the best place for the cooler.

 

The holes are already on your Cutlass on the upper radiator support to mount the cooler, the left leg of the cooler will go under your dogbone mount, and there's a threaded hole already there for the right hand side mount. In fact, if you'll look at the plastic panel just below your dogbone mount, you'll see the factory already cut little reliefs out of the top of that piece to allow for the cooler "legs" to pass through without rubbing.

 

It's a little different under the car, the lower radiator support has two slots for the weird bolts that hold the lower cooler bracket in place. Only one of them are in the right place, but a drill will allow you to make a new slot.

 

Also, the Cutlass convertibles have an "X" brace in front of the radiator, but careful bending of the cooler brackets will gain you enough clearance to keep the cooler away from the brace. Earlier Cutlasses have bolted braces, and earler 3.4 Cutlass convertibles had a flattened bar to allow for that clearance, but later models the brace is welded in, and not flattened. Just slightly bend the cooler bracket.

 

I had to take the entire headlight panel out of my car, which gave me access to the box. I only took the driver's side plastic pins out of the box for access, no need to completely disassemble the front end. I also had to run the rubber lines to the cooler in from the bottom of the plenum box, so as not to put holes in the box. The Regal cooler lines pointed straight down, and I cut them just before they started bending toward the driver's side, giving me two hard lines coming 90 degrees pointed downward toward my rubber lines I added.

 

Total time/cost for my '95 LQ1 Cutlass--approximately 6 hours and $40.00, including hoses and clamps. It's exactly like the factory setup, except for the Regal's cooler lines were shaped differently, so I had to cut the lines, and use rubber trans cooler hose to go from the cooler hard lines to the rest of the system. Be sure to get those lines from the donor car, they will make life that much easier. Besides, they're CHEAP at the junkyard.

 

There's a writeup I did when I added the cooler to my car, check powertrain forum, I'm thinking it was sometime in August/September 2009.

 

Let me know if I can be any help...it's not a bad job, if you know where all the little "gotchas" are.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Galaxie500XL

[DavidHowell3633]

I installed mine by threading the plastic posts thru the AC condenser only- and on the drivers side as Galaxie500XL indicated. This allows the radiator to be removed/replaced later without affecting your cooler. I also used some adhesive foam strips between the structural bars and the fins of the cooler. Routing the transmission fluid hoses toward the passenger side/upper radiator area, I used some short lengths of hose split laterally and secured with plastic tie wraps as insulators to the transmission fluid hose in case rubbing against metal might be abrasive to the transmission hose. By the way, I used a stackable fin design cooler which has a cold temp flow cutoff built-in. The snake tube design will cool and might work well, but I didn't go with that. On another subject: On a cold morning, my transmission when shifted into Reverse would take several seconds to engage. Thanks to the Forum, I went to the GM dealer and bought a $9 bottle of transmission sealer/conditioner and that solved my problem. I had previously tried a bottle of whatever Azone had and it did not help.

[Crazy K]

use PROPER oil capable hose. they make tranny cooler line. A robust alternative to cooler line is high pressure steering line, which is also oil compatible. Fuel line, emission line, or vacuum hose should not be used in an oil application as it may erode or burst and fail.

 

If you mount a cooler with the plastic aftermarket zips, you should mount it ONLY through the condenser, and not the radiator.

 

Factory 1993- coolers from cars with 3.4s, 3800s, and rare but not unheard of 3.1s that mount in front of the core support CAN be adapted for use on 94+ cars. 93- and 94+ use a different radiator core support, but 93- coolers exist and can be found cheap from a j/y and be installed with a little work on a 94+ car. In my installation, I had to make custom lines since the metal lines interfered with the core support. I also made a custom bracket for the lower side that did not fit the core support change... I did this by hacking a second factory cooler for it's second leg and bolting that to the cooler. pics forthcoming.

 

 

I'm interested in more info about the temperature regulated aftermarket cooler!

[Galaxie500XL]

Actually, the way I mounted mine allows the radiator to be removed or replaced without touching the cooler at all...all you have to do is remove the two metal lines at the radiator, which you'd have to do anyway if you were removing the radiator. The cooler itself uses 3 of the 4 holes GM already provided for the factory cooler, which mounts the cooler in front of the condenser on the driver's side. If there's interest, I'd be happy to take a couple of pictures and post them, showing how mine is done. Basically, mine is set up exactly like the factory cooler, the only difference being the two rubber transmission cooler lines, since I didn't have proper bent line. They're slightly less than two feet long, and start at the far driver's side of the lower radiator support, then go through the small hole in the bumper support, then to the inlet/outlet of the cooler. The fluid routing is the way the factory did on cars originally equipped with a cooler.

[DavidHowell3633]

http://www.transmissioncoolers.us/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=tru-cool-thin

[Crazy K]

http://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c214/Crazy_Ken/transmission%20cooler/

pics of the modified transmission cooler... before i cut and redid the metal lines.