Transmission temp guage anyone done it?

Hi all

I got a question for the auto folks. Anyone of you guys ever set up a temp gauge for the auto tranny? I would really like to monitor the fluid temp? Anyone done thus before and have done pointers how they set it up? Might be a long shot cause I know we mostly gave manual folks here, but figured I would ask.

Thanks

Mike

DO you have an auxillary tranny cooler? With a non-lockup tranny it will run warmer than one with a lockup converter. But if you're running at cruising speed with plenty of air cycling thru I would think you'll be ok without it.

Ya I would just run a auxiliary cooler and cut off the temp gauge . Just a suggestion , do what make you happy mikey

Ok, sorry I'm unfamiliar with an auxiliary cooler? What do you mean by that?

Mike

An auxillary transmission cooler mounts in front of the radiator and is about the size of a heater core, just not as thick. A universal kit will come with rubber hose and clamps, but on your car you will probably have to cut off the threaded fittings where your current cooler lines thread into the radiator. Make sure to keep the hoses away from your fan.

I'd recommend going over to Madison Spring and get a universal tranny cooler kit for a Towing Vehicle. That should have plenty of capacity to keep your 727 cool.

moparkid wrote:

An auxillary transmission cooler mounts in front of the radiator and is about the size of a heater core, just not as thick. A universal kit will come with rubber hose and clamps, but on your car you will probably have to cut off the threaded fittings where your current cooler lines thread into the radiator. Make sure to keep the hoses away from your fan.

I'd recommend going over to Madison Spring and get a universal tranny cooler kit for a Towing Vehicle. That should have plenty of capacity to keep your 727 cool.

X2...

However, you shouldn't have to cut off the end of the stock cooler line coming out of the radiator. I've put an external cooler on every one of my automatic "play" cars. It's cheap insurance. They only cost $25-40 depending on the size.

Most universal kits come with a 3-5" section of hard line, with various fittings for different radiators. Then what you do is un-thread the return line off the radiator, put on the supplied line, route the hoses to the cooler, then back to the stock return line.

You want to run them in series, thru the stock cooler first, then thru the external..... hope this makes sense.

About your original question though, the sensor/sending unit is usually drilled & tapped into the side or bottom of the pan ( can you say headache ) So once that mess is done, then you're gonna have to find a way into the cabin with the wire, which either means drilling a hole in the floor or extending the wire to come up the firewall & in.

Just get an external cooler & don't worry about the temp.

The one part of tom post that i do not agree with is running through the stock heater er i mean cooler first if you car runs at 180 why heat the fluid up first? your coolant will warm up more and faster then your trans fluid. Just run a big cooler and bypass the radiator.

Ok so mount it in front of the radiator and basically cut the stock ones out and reroute the tubing to go through the cooler. How much of a pain in the ass is this to do?

Also thanks for your help folks!

mike

Your not actually cutting the cooler out....... Just wanted to make are you understood that. You can disconnect the lines from the stock cooler and then you may or may not have to cu tye end of it off put a hose on and run it to the new cooler. It would be pretty easy and i will be willing to help when i get my car done.

Thanks Steve

I would appreciate that!

Mike

MikeyT wrote:

Ok so mount it in front of the radiator and basically cut the stock ones out and reroute the tubing to go through the cooler. How much of a pain in the ass is this to do?

Also thanks for your help folks!

mike

Its not as hard as it sounds. 45min-hour job tops.

brngrhd wrote:

The one part of tom post that i do not agree with is running through the stock heater er i mean cooler first if you car runs at 180 why heat the fluid up first? your coolant will warm up more and faster then your trans fluid. Just run a big cooler and bypass the radiator.

Yea, could do that too. The bigger they get, the more expensive they get. Keep that in mind Mike.

About routing though. Maybe I've been hooking mine up wrong, but why external first, before radiator? Then you'd be having cooled oil going into a hotter radiator & heated back up, defeating the purpose of the external cooler.... right?

Anywho, it's your car Mike do what you want, but a huge external cooler isn't the dumbest idea either. I'm just looking at it from a cost standpoint.

Tom

I see your point and appreciate the point about cost. I guess I might be confused because I thought mounting it in front was cooling it and you just bypassed the other stock one?

Mike

I had a 3200 stall in my manual valve bodied c4 and didn't have a temp gauge. The car would 60' in the 1.5's on motor, and in the 1.4's on nitrous. I never had a problem with trans temp, and I drove that car everywhere. I researched a temp gauge for a short while, but came to the conclusion that i didn't need one. I had a decent size cooler that did not go thru the radiator, and never had an issue.

I am going to be running my sender in series with the return line from my cooler. Pretty straight forward and simple.

Sorry tom what i was saying was skip the radiator all together.....

So skipping the instructions on how a space age trans cooler might work and addressing your actual question, I bet you could weld a bung into your trans pan and run a higher reading water temp gauge to see your fluid temp.

[quote="1twisted6"]

moparkid wrote:

About your original question though, the sensor/sending unit is usually drilled & tapped into the side or bottom of the pan ( can you say headache ) So once that mess is done, then you're gonna have to find a way into the cabin with the wire, which either means drilling a hole in the floor or extending the wire to come up the firewall & in.

I must have missed that while reading on my phone because of everyones signatures