trans cooler

im about to replace my little flat plate style trans cooler with a pretty good sized one from a ford explorer.. question is ----- to skip the radiator pass through all together or not ? lots of mixed reviews on this but not being in an extreme cold climate my instinct says to run the trans cooler as a stand alone without radiator pass through like i currently have it.. whats the current consensus on this subject...??

I'm with you.

The main reason to run passthru is so that the transmission fluid could warm up enough if the weather's really cold.

RwP

The integrated trans cooler within a radiator over time builds up with corrosion and restricts flow. If you are certain the flow isn't restricted (I would test it out) then you won't have a problem using it. The issue with them in my experience isn't that they do a poor job cooling it is that they typically don't flow enough fluid.

I think plumbing it as a stand alone unit is better. Unless you live in an artic climate, you won't have any trouble heating up the transmission fluid. Both my SCs have very large stand alone transmission coolers with fans than run continously.

David

I ran it thru the radiator and I still have issues warming up on cold days. Sucker works really good. I went with one of those B&M plate style, much better over the fin and tube style.

I'm seeing 120-140F TOT on chilly days after driving around a bit

On a normal day 70-80F it always stays below 200F TOT