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245 trans cooler

SOHC

New member
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Location
NZ
Hello, I have a 1981 245 with a BW 55 automatic, the transmission wore out after I had been driving the car for 10 years, clunking, whining, and lots of heat. I have replaced it now with a nice trans I got from a car being wrecked, it came with a stacked plate cooler. I live in Newzealand it gets up to around 94 degrees F in summer MAX and hardly ever drops below 37 degrees F, its cold more often than hot. I do alot of hill driving and mountain pass driving, I plumbed the stacked plate cooler in before the radiator heat exchanger, and I could feel a difference, its bringing the temp down, I am just wondering should I do it the other way around for max cooling? or will i mess up the fuel economy in cold weather witch is alot of the time.
 
Add a thermostat?

IDK, stock USA 700Turbos have it going to the cute little beautifully made/installed setrab made cooler first and then the radiator for a warmup thereafter I wanna say?

244T police car has a t-static bypass on the one I owned, but the optional 240 "towing" cooler kit basically routes it same as a stock USA 700T, just with special hoses/brackets/fittings is all, but it's functionally the same as a stock 7/9 Turbo car w/mechanical engine cooling fan (up to/including 1991 model year in the USA, not sure about anywhere else...cars without A/C in other markets should use the mechanical cooling fan up to 1998).

Later 7/9T 1992+ have no external cooler and just the kinda pathetic radiator thingy.

Best of luck,
-Jimbo
 
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I think I would bypass the radiator heat exchanger totally and fit a huge cooler if I had a thermostat.

I guess if they had the remote cooler in series before the radiator heat exchanger from factory on the turbo models I should leave it,
 
*shrug* seems to work eh?
Unless you do a lot of towing with an N/A 240, the 700Ts seem to make it to 200-250K miles+ on one transmission on abusive/minimal fluid changes/some nice black fluid borderline totally clogging the pickup screen :lol:.
They're a pretty tough/well made transmission.

The t-static 240 cop car setup regulates the flow path between the cooler (warmer?) in the radiator and the external cooler. No doubt you can find such a thing if you insist, but Volvo just for the optional trans cooler kit for 240 and stock 7/9 Turbos didn't even bother on most of them.

In cold weather cars, one of the problems is those stupid plastic check balls in the valve body dissolving in ancient fluid and winding up in the throttle valve and gumming it up and it all going to **** thereafter. But that's not really a cooler issue per-se....
 
I think the last trans lasted around the 280k mile mark, it wore out a bearing inside it got run out of fluid a couple times form leaks and it all ways got very hot, I managed to get another 4 years from it by fitting a tube and fin cooler witch got the heat down a bit.


We have the steepest streets in the world here,
 
The reason you add an external fluid/air cooler before the water/fluid cooler in the radiator is that the coolant temperature helps regulate the temperature of fluid returning to the transmission It's a poor man's thermostat for the transmission. If of course isn't necessary if you have a standalone thermostat for the transmission cooler, but that's an extra part that the factory didn't want to install.
 
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