Contributed by Mike Ski
Ok, this pretty easy to do but hey I
like taking pictures banging my knuckles on my car so I decided to give you guys an idea
of how to install the tranny cooler. It can be done in about 1 hour or less after you jack
the car up. So on with on with the show.
So what to buy? I bought a Hayden Rapid Transmission Cooler Part #
679, Extra Heavy Duty ¾” x 11 ¾”
x11” and an additional parts bag, just cause I mess up a lot so you don’t need
it. There are many tranny cooler out there but I bought this one cause it was the largest
and cause it is so thin.
As you can see it looks thin and it is only ¾” thick.
Like I said you need to jack the car
up or use some ramps. I use ramps and I have these additional plastic ramps you attach to
the ramps for low profile cars like ours.
I recommend these things to anyone who owns a Camaro/Firebird!
Now on to the what to do first and
that is remove the plastic intake from the filters to the throttle body. Remember to
disconnect the MAF and remove the filters
too.
Next you want to remove the return hose
on the top of the radiator driver side.
Now you would want to remove the bolts holding the radiator in place. Ok you really don’t have to these last 2 steps but while your working on this you can pull the radiator out alittle and clean between the AC condenser and the radiator. I thought I don’t have trees around well let me tell you I found a lot of leaves there.
Go over to the passenger side and remove the 2 hoses from it. One should be the
overflow to the reserve coolant tank and the other larger one is to the heater.
When I removed the heater hose, ¾” size, it was cracked where the clamp was so off the parts store for a 20” piece of ¾” heater hose.
It never fails when working on cars something else is going to be bad so always have a second car or buddy to take you to the store.
With the 2 hoses removed you now have access to the tranny return line right below it. If you have never removed this line be very careful and spray some WD40 on it, wait 15 minutes, before attempting to unscrew it. Now I used a pair of Sears RoboGrips, I love these things, but you could use and open end wrench or the special tranny line wrenches that look like an open end box wrench. Again be careful and don’t bend/ kink the line.
You can see that
pressure-fitting bolt on the line got alittle chewed up from the RoboGrips; I should have
removed the battery for better access.
Memo to self: Don’t be so lazy remove battery for easier access to
tranny line to radiator.
But as you can see it just pulls out and pull the bolt back as far as it will go.
Now time to climb under the car. You
may be able to remove the plastic filter box from the top and put the tranny cooler in
through the top but I have the custom ram air setup on my car so it’s tied in there
so it is too much for me to remove it and put it back so I went from under the car to
install the cooler.
The next picture is from under the car
and I have the tranny cooler in but not connected. However I had to remove a bolt on the
crossover bar in front of the AC condenser in order to put this tranny cooler in. May be
on other types of coolers you won’t have to do this.
But the tranny cooler fit so nice in there I was amazed.
Ok so the tranny cooler is in there but it is a wise idea to connect the hoses on it first I didn’t and man was it a bitch to put the hoses on the cooler. So here it is with the hoses on. Now if you look on the left side and notice how the hoses go over a black looking piece. That piece is soft like rubber but it still worries me. I may cut it later or you may want to when you install the tranny cooler hoses or better yet drill large hole in it and put the hoses through it.
Here is another shot of it. I used my favorite thing in the world wire ties. Use them for a lot of things. I got the hoses off of the rubber thing.
One last thing is as I stated in the beginning I got an extra install kit. This helped me since I used one hose for each line to the cooler. The way I did it used most of the length of the hoses.
Ok now the hoses are in place but the cross bar is not bolted in and when I bolted it in the turn from the cooler on the hose going up was too sharp of a turn, for my liking, so I had to reroute the bottom hose over the crossbar. As shown below.
Now for the top views, as you can see
below I got the hoses coming right behind the passenger Hi Beam light. I use tie wraps to
hold the two hoses together and then tied them to another wire harness coming through
there.
I didn’t want it to lie against the metal so I used another wire tie. To avoid using wire ties I would go to a junkyard and get a radiator hose and cut it and run the tranny hoses threw it, of course you’d have to cut the radiator hose.
Unfortunately this is a bad picture and
I’m sorry for it but the piece I’m holding is what you screw into the radiator.
Remember the original tranny line, seen below it; you will screw it into where you removed
the original line.
Now you will the hoses up and attach one to the original tranny line you removed from the radiator and then attach the other to the small pipe you assembled into the radiator. And it should look like this when done.
I left the one hose long so I bring it in and loop back to the radiator. The other one went straight to the return line to the transmission.
Improvements? Yes, the car does seen to
run cooler like 10 degrees in city driving which will be a side effect but the unseen
affect is the cooler tranny fluid in the tranny The instructions, that come with it are
very good too, so read them as well and if you plan to route the hoses like I did you will
need an extra tranny hose. Install Time? < 1 hour Good Luck and have Fun!
Ski |
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