In my continued experiment with the transmission coolers I moved them back up front where they would get better airflow. I still didn't want to put one in the cooling row so I did a shuffle. I originally had my power steering cooler mounted underneath the radiator. I moved that to in front of the driver side battery tray and then figured out some way to mount a transmission cooler. I also decided to go back to my coolant heat exchanger coupled with a transmission cooler with it's own fan.
Here is the cooler with the fan and funky collar bone mount.
It goes under the radiator between the front frame gussets. I had to play with getting it to fit beneath the radiator but have enough clearance above the steering drag link. Once I got the height figured out I burned it in. If you look closely at the bottom left side of the photo you can see that's where I stuffed my heat exchanger. I cut an access hole out of the gusset and welded some bolts on the frame for mounts and it just fit. This radiator (nor my original FJ60 radiator) did not have an integrated transmission cooler so I set this heat exchanger/cooler up many years ago. So hot tranny fluid goes from the transmission, to the heat exchanger/cooler, to the transmission cooler with fan, and then back to the transmission. The fan pulls cooler air from down below and out underneath the radiator. Since I have those hood vents located in this area the thought was this would help the airflow exit those vents at lower speeds and then at highway speeds the negative pressure above the vents would help pull the heated air out of the engine bay.
I made some simple box mounts for the front of the cooler that I welded to the underside of the crossmember.
This was all done during the hot summer last year. I finished this all up at 10 pm at night and the next day after work we were headed down to California for a family visit and a trip on the Dusy Ershim trail. With everything filled I drove it down the street and thankfully nothing leaked. The next day my wife drove it down to discount tire and we swapped out the Gladiator Xcomps for a set of 40" Cooper STT Pro's while I was at work. Once I got home and with the rig packed we headed down to California with very little seat time on the new setup.
The new radiator kept the temps in check and we were able to run the AC this time with engine temps at 195-200F. On a couple of pulls I'd turn off the AC and on the serious ones we'd run the heater but we never had to pull over due to engine temps, those stayed below 230F on the hard pulls. Sadly, the transmission temp averaged 210F most of the trip so there was still something going on. Besides that we made it down to California, recovered for a day or two and splashed in the pool. The kids stayed with Gma and Gpa while my wife and I then met up with Andy and Tom to caravan down to the Dusy Ershim trail head. Rick, Dale, and new to me Chris were already on the trail with camp set up.
