Up $h** creek right now, trans cooler install failure

I fabbed up a little offset tonight to mount to an adjacent hole. Currently checking fluid levels and overflowing. Hopefully I’ll test drive and be done tonight.

 

Good work and a nice solution.

 

Here’s the real problem… 38k miles with no towing and no cooler… black as night. Guess I need to do a drain and fill soon.

 

That’s not ideal. I wish I knew why they got rid of the trans cooler. My gut tells me cost savings but I really can’t back that up with anything. I’m not a fan of the single radiator with the trans cooler and the coolant running through it either but it’s better than nothing.

I’m considering getting the factory cooler from the older tundras and mounting it on mine whenever I end up having to replace the radiator.

 

I can only assume a combo of cost savings and an assumed lack of liability since most don’t tow and won’t see failures inside the warranty period.

That debate could go round and round for decades though, I’m sure

 

I just towed an 8000# trailer 52 miles on occasionally hilly terrain with some sustained climbs in 70° weather. Temps in the pan never got over 222°. Converter temps peaked at 252°, but would immediately drop once the converter locked back up.

 

Yeah, I’d be inclined to trust the Toyota engineers typically, but I’ve routinely seen pan temps in the 230s on road trips without towing. And my ATF fluid looks like trash already with 38k miles without towing.

 

Doing a drain and fill on mine next oil change. Interested to see the condition of the fluid.

 

Did you make it to work on time?

 

Haha yeah, borrowed a car. Wasn’t ideal, but I was def on the way to fubar Sunday night, so I listened to the forum wisdom.

 

I’ll be curious to see. I was shocked that mine looked so bad. I’ve really babied my truck so far.

 

I’ve heard this WS fluid darkens pretty quickly. Even the third gen guys changing their 30k fluid have seen it is darker than expected.

 

Is there any laymen’s way to analyze the health of the WS fluid besides color or an expensive 3rd party service?

 

There’s always:

https://www.blackstone-labs.com/engine-types/transmission/

my OBD2 reader shows a thermal degradation estimate. Supposed to give you an idea of the stress the fluid has seen.

 

Yeah, I might have to do blackstone, didn’t realize it was only $35.

Which reader do you use?

 

I have the same kit as you. I remember having a battle with that bolt. Fortunately I caught it before too many uggs and duggs were applied. I cleaned it with a barrel brush and ended up reusing a bolt from the horn, if I recall. Glad you've made it to the other side.

 

The Veepeak OBD BLE and the OBD fusion app for iPhone

 

I wish I had tried that horn bolt before I snapped the other one off.

I noticed GCS doesn’t offer that same cooler kit anymore and I reached out…turns out Nick sold GCS a year or two ago and the new owner wasn’t entirely familiar with this old kit (I think I ordered in 2021) to offer any advice.

 

Holy cow, I need that dashboard. I’m running the same module and app. I didn’t know most of those readouts were options

 

Well, my fluid degradation estimate is only at 2474… I guess it looks a lot worse than it is. I think I read on here somewhere that ~50k was effectively trashed fluid.

 

The last version of the stock cooler shared the radiator with the air conditioning. Well in 2019 they went to a new more environmentally friendly, less affective refrigerant and needed the entire space to make the AC actually cool. Thank the EPA for destroying transmissions. Government hack job organization.

 

EPA tries to ruin everything