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Can I Repurpose My Transmission Oil Cooler?

By buurin, May 23, 2011



My car came from the factory with a transmission oil cooler at the bottom of the radiator as it was an auto. I swapped to manual in 2007 but didn't touch the cooler. So it's sitting there doing nothing. Assuming I get the right plumbing and flush all the remaining ATF out, can I reuse it to cool engine oil? Would I see benefit from doing this?

Should be able to do so. Some trucks actually use this approach and have two oil circuits in them - one for trans fluid, the other for engine oil. The only concerns I'd have would be if the ATF cooler can handle the pressure of engine oil, and you'd have to find some novel way to run the system in parallel and not in series, in the event of one of the cooler lines collapsing on you - that would cut off all oil flow.

This won't be as efficient as a dedicated auxilary oil cooler - but since you don't have to add any additional hardware, the existing transaxle oil cooler might be the ticket.



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