Transmission Cooler?

Does it mean the transmission cooler is in superposition?

 

That goes without saying.

 

This^

I added Nicks cooler early summer 2020, now towing my boat and trunk loaded up for vacation I've no transmission temp worries. edit-boat is about 4500lbs

Not only that my fuel economy is usually in the 9 to 12 mpg range, try doing that in S4.

 

I saw 250 degrees with an empty single axle dump trailer as I drove around town without a cooler. In my opinion, if you are going to tow, you need a cooler.

 

Good read will look into the kit I agree on the cooler.

 

IMO, it's all about what you're towing. Not only about total weight as the "frontal area" of your trailer is important too as wind resistance is a big factor when at highway speeds.

I hauled a 4,000 travel trailer and a truck-load of gear over mountains and through hot summer months for a few years and didn't need the cooler. Temperatures will fluctuate more if you leave the transmission in D, so move it to S4 to lock out 5th and 6th gears. If you click on the oil analysis link in my signature and scroll to post 18 you'll see my transmission fluid analysis report. No issues with what I've done so far. Today's oils are designed to handle these higher temperatures, so if you're not towing anything super heavy or shaped like a brick I think you're fine without a cooler. I 100% agree in purchasing something to monitor your temps. I use a ScanGauge II and love it.

Having said all that, I purchased a much larger travel trailer in August. It is a foot wider and taller, and about 3000lbs heavier. My MPGs dropped 20% and while the transmission temps were fine on the highway on level ground, they did get warmer much quicker on even the small hills. I didn't tow the new trailer in hot weather or over mountain passes yet and given the performance so far, I know that won't be a good experience. So I will be adding a cooler before camping season next Spring.

 

As far as I know.

They were stand alone originally, I believe around 2014 they were included in the A/C condenser. After 2018 R-134A refrigerant was no longer used and the replacement needed the entire condenser since it was not as efficient as 134A.

Toyota never spent any R&D to add a transmission cooler to the 2019-2021 because a new refrigerant R-1234yf needed the entire condenser space and could not share with ATF. 2022 was suppose to be the new tundra which has an ATF cooler but Covid pushed it to 2023.

I fully believe 2019-2022 would still have and ATF cooler if the government still let them use R-134A for the A/C.

Pre 2019 and post 2022 all have ATF coolers as far as I know.

I don’t think Toyota flip flopped on if it needed it, I just think they did a production line change to the A/C condenser which forced the ATF cooler to be dropped.

I bought a Tundra so I wouldn’t have to worry about longevity and heavy maintenance so I added the cooler.

If I wanted to roll the dice for cost/benefit on longevity or heavy maintenance I would have bought a Chevy and not a Toyota.

 

Your theory on why they ditched the cooler makes sense except for the fact that 2018 has the newer Freon and the integrated trans cooler.

 

Correct, and 2018 had complaints that the AC was not cold enough. So to remedy the AC not being cold enough they used a larger condenser and kicked the ATF cooler out because the AC not being cold is an immediate customer issue where as a failing transmission will undoubtedly be outside of the warranty period.
https://www.tundras.com/threads/2018-ac-not-cold-enough.27457/

 

If you upgrade to a Superduty or GM HD, do not track your trans temps. Those trucks have factory trans coolers. Many spend their lives with a trailer hooked up.

Ford’s ECM will not turn on the cooling fans to help the trans until temps are over 247 degrees. Please do not attempt to modify Ford’s ECM. You may need to add a 2nd trans cooler instead.

 

I'm not sure the relevance in this statement. If the superduty has a transmission cooler it is going to take a lot more to get the temps up to 247 since it has a radiator cooling the fluid with the fan on or not, only time a fan is necessary to cool is at low speeds and no Tundra has a cooler that operates the fan unless it's an aftermarket cooler with added fans. You can easily see temps on a 19-21 Tundra reach 247 unloaded. I was where you were once, bought my nice new 2019 and thought it was perfect and didn't need what Toyota didn't put on it. Then I seen the actual transmission temps so I figured I'd just do drain and fills of the transmission to keep my mind at ease. Eventually in 2022 I realized it made a lot more sense to put back what should have been there to begin with and added a cooler and now my temps are easily 30-50° cooler on average unloaded. The fact remains that heat kills transmissions because heat degrades the fluid, your Tundra actually has a ATF Degradation counter you can read which is based the temps the fluid sees. Keeping the fluid fresh will help but having a cooler is clearly beneficial and Toyota thought the same thing for every year of the Tundra except 19-21 and its not like 19-21 has a different transmission. I'm not telling you that you should install a cooler, just letting you know I understand where you are coming from trying to convince yourself that you dont need one. The biggest thing is how long you plan to keep your truck, personally this is hopefully the last truck I ever need to buy so I'm doing everything possible to make it last, if I planned to trade it in after 5 years I wouldn't bother.

 

I have a 2021, its on 37s with 5.29. Without the trans cooler, i was doing 230, 250 doing up steep grades. Thats keeping it in 4the gear too (1:1). With the cooler, I never go past 200. Get it to save your trans

 

The part that bothered me the most out of all of this is that dealerships sold the Tundra after 2018+ saying they had a transmission cooler and the cost of deleting it was never realized in the pricing.

You ask them where it is and they reference the warmer puck. It’s deceptive and the worst part of Toyota’s decision.

 

Bought one from Nick w/ Genuine Cooling Systems, looking to install hopefully this week. If you're keeping your truck for awhile most on here seem to recommend it.

 

I bought a 2020 4x4 SR5 in Texas this June with about 12k miles. The dealership showed me paperwork that the truck had a transmission cooler. (I'm not entirely sure what to look for unfortunately.) I then hauled a 30 foot camper to Alaska. Its dry weight is just shy of 5000 pounds, so it's probably 3 tons or so loaded up. I had no trouble on the way, which of course included many mountain ranges and the unmerciful Alaskan Highway. I quit using tow/haul mode after the first few days. It seemed to get slightly better mpg without it on the flats and it didn't hunt gears. (Sometimes I got 10, averaged about 8, and sometimes got 7). I used tow/haul for the mountains and selected gears for heading down. (Probably would always use tow/haul for towing after reading a bit more about it.) After finding a house with a real nice steep driveway, I did manage to make the "Hey the transmission is too hot light" go off while backing the trailer up the drive. I had to switch to 4x4 because the rear wheels started slipping on the way up. Fun times. So, I'm wondering if I really do have a transmission cooler and if not, how long 'til my tranny locks up?

 

even if you have a cooler, a tranny in high range will still get hot, especially if you are spinning that torque converter. In steep cases, you’ll wanna be in 4low

 

2019+ have a coolant-ATF heat exchanger, but not a transmission cooler. Cost me around $600 in parts to reintroduce the cooler.

 

The thermostat is designed to keep the temp at 195, if you remove the thermostat (pinned) your going to run cooler.
If you were to remove the engine coolant thermostate the temperature of your engin coolant would fall below the themostats temp setting.

Thermostates are designed to maintain a set temperature, pinning it open efectivly removes it from the system.

 

Apol

apologies...I moved the post over to the "degradation" post...I was in the wrong thread.

your answer makes sense.

 

Unless the previous owner added it, you do not have a transmission cooler. If you have one you will see a small radiator to the left behind the grill.

 

Thank you Joe333x. I was hoping the smaller silver radiator in front of the larger black radiator in this picture was the transmission cooler. Looks like the dealership and Toyota hoodwinked me. At least I made it, but probably should have gone with the Super Duty for this towing job. Let's see if I have any transmission problems.

 

That is your AC condenser, the tube attached to it on the left is its dryer.

Drain&fill ATF. If it's brownish/dirty, do another d&f in a few hundred miles.

 

Don't worry everyone with a 2019+ got hoodwinked. If your atf high temp light came on the fluid should be drain and filled a couple times like stated above. A drain and fill one exchanges about a 3rd of the fluid. Grab a cooler from @Genuine Cooling Systems and you shouldn't see that light again.

 

Time to learn how to drain and fill the transmission, thank you fellas. (It takes weeks to get into the Toyota dealership in Anchorage and everything in AK is painfully expensive.) I hope to only tow that trailer one more time, so I'll probably not put $1300 into a transmission cooler (and have to figure out how to do that as well). But I very much appreciate the information.

 

Drain and fill is as easy as an oil change. The only thing that makes it seem complicated is the check procedure but its really very easy if you own an obd tool that can tell you the ATF pan temp. You open the fill port, open the drain port, about 4qts will come out, put the drain plug back in then use a pump like the slippery pete pump available on Amazon that fits on wide mouth containers. Pump in 4qts of Toyota WS fluid. Start the truck and let the fluid temp come up to 99°-111° and open the check bolt, let the fluid come out of the check bolt until the flow is not strong enough to flow straight down and starts to trickle down the pan. Put the check bolt back in and you're done. If you dont want to do the check procedure you can just do the method where you measure what comes out and put that amount back in.

 

Solid advice

 

Do your tranny a favor and always use 4lo when parking/moving something that large

 

I was so worried about backing up that trailer up a steep curvy driveway that 4 LO did not occur to me until afterwards. DUH. Life is hard on the simple minded. After watching some transmission fluid change videos, I think it's time to make an appointment with the dealership. I don't want to screw it up and getting everything exactly right does not seem like a job for an amateur. Even the oil changes are harder on these Toyotas with that funky filter setup. Hopefully, I haven't ruined this delicate, non-cooler-having, Toyota transmission and it will survive until I can have it done by someone who also hopefully does the job right. You guys are fantastic, thank you all for your insightful comments.

 

Nobody cares about the fluid, its cheap and easily replaced. Its the seals and other non-metallic components in the transmission that deteriorate with higher temperatures and not easily replaceable. Good news is the Tundra transmission is such a dinosaur you can buy one from Toyota for about $4K. Soooo transcooler is $1K, making a replacement trans $3K. Either way not allot of money compared to a $25K PDK transmission in a 911.

 

Interesting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVTMwT5nLKc