suggestions for transmission cooler

[bcolins]

I will be doing a trans drain and refill with a new trans filter soon. Thinking this would be a good time to add a transmission cooler,....so, looking for suggestions for trans cooler sources.

Brian in Austin

[Whridlsoncestood]

Gowesty seems to be the most common and well received I’ve seen. Plan to do that to mine in the spring with a trans flush as well. Along with brakes, calipers, t stat, coolant sensors, crack pipe.....Its gonna get messy this spring.

https://www.gowesty.com/product/automatic/23294/external-cooler-kit-for-automatic-transaxle-

[Abscate]

If you aren’t towing or doing extreme off road, leave it stock. The AT aid designed to run at the temperature of the coolant. Replace ATF every 40k standard. 20k for severe.

No extra hoses, clamps, or fittings to fail.
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[comet42]

Pop Top Heaven kit also seems like a solid option with updated connectors:
https://www.poptopheaven.com/shop.asp#!/Eurovan-Tr...y=32755070

I installed a cooler last fall when these kits were out of stock at both vendors. Ultimately I went with the kit from German Transaxle in Bend figuring who better than the folks that actually repair our transmissions? The fittings are a little more old school but do include the wide hose clamps.

German Transaxle Kit:
https://www.germantransaxle.com/VW-Eurovan-4-speed...mp;id=1377
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86 Doka (Suby 2.2)
02 Eurovan Weekender (sold)
73 Squareback (sold)
79 Bus - Champagne Edition (sold)

[bcolins]

[MrPulldown]

When our van was new I overheated the ATF several times on long mountain climbs. At about 15k the transmission blew up. Like literally trail of metal and ATF 100 feet before coming to a dead stop. VW replaced it under warranty. Afterwards the trans would still overheat on long climbs. You can tell when the trans would get stuck in 1st gear and not up shift. I changed out the ATF often. About 20k ago I installed a go westy ATF cooler. No more overheating.

The stock cooler uses the engine coolant to cool. According to go westy the coolant can get much hotter than the gauge indicated 190. Forget the exact numbers but high 200s(?). This is atf cooking temp. On long climbs not only is the trans working much harder but the engine is too and the system can not dump the heat. Need an external cooler to do so.

The stock cooler is great at pre heating the ATF which is important for proper trans function. Cold atf shifts poorly. I do notice especially now that I live in the mountains in the winter that it can take a. Very long time for the atf to warm up. The go weaty cooler has a thermostat which prevents the atf to flow through the cooler until it is warm. This is a must.

With the external cooler you can remove the coolant the atf heat exchanger. Then delete the coolant lines going to the exchanger. I did this recently as the fittings provided by the kit were leaking. Cleans up the routing quite a bit.
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2002 EVC

[Abscate]

I documented my ATF temps pulling a 3000 pound car up and down hills in Vermont where it reached steady state temps in the low 200s with the stick system

I also pull a 3000 pound boat 400 miles six times a year with this, since 2002.
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.ssS!

[bcolins]

[Zeitgeist 13]

I reverse engineered the poptop heaven kit and bought my own components. I like that it simplified the engine coolant plumbing and freed up space in the engine compartment. The stock heat exchanger just makes me nervous. Any liquid other than ATF in an automatic is certain death. I've also had to flush out a MB engine cooling system when the exchanger burst and ejected a lot of ATF throughout the system. Gross.
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Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[MrPulldown]

[Abscate]

[VolksVelo]

Thanks for the info, Abscate. Really good to know. As a new owner of a low-mile 02 EVC these transmission failure stories, frequently posted here, really scared me. I like to keep this van as long as possible without having to install any components that significantly altered the original design. I'll keep this thing religiously maintained as well as driving it sensibly.

Just wondering how much cooler the atf fluid would be if it's driven uphills at much lower speed with the gears manually selected.

[elise111]

I think one of the missing elements in these discussions may be the severity of the environment. Truckee CA has very high elevation, plus can be hot. Vermont maybe not so severe. I suppose many in Abscate’s circle of EV friends travel and may hit higher passes and higher temps, but maybe not as often as someone that likes in Truckee. In any case, there is solid data that shows insufficient thermal margin with the Eurovan application. Some are hitting these extremes, and some are not.

The factory cooler is a more reliable cooler, not the same efficiency as the large external coolers, but it doesn’t have the high pressure flexible oil line failure risks.

I’m in SoCal, and the rotation of EV’s at our local trans specialist is amazing. If you go the external cooler route, these have hose and connector reliability issues that can lead to trans failure, so it becomes something to watch and potentially maintain.

I am a strictly stock type of owner, but after having trans issues at 105k, seeing the clutch plate residue in the filter, I went for a rebuild. I decided to break my stock rules and use the GoWesty cooler. I paid a lot of attention to the hose routing and clamping, and I look at the connections regularly.

Pete

[smores]

[Abscate]

I found the ATF temperature reached steady state pretty quickly on hill pulls of 60 mph in third. I think I posted it up here , too.

I’m running Pentosin synthetic ATF. I hadn’t noticed transmission performance change but after the last swap it was silky smooth.
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.ssS!

[Blaque Jacques]

I bought a 97 EVC last year with 167k mikes and documentation of a tranny rebuilt by aamco at 140k miles. I live in the desert SW and frequently drive into the mountains and at over 100deg. We did a number of long roadtrips in the van last summer after purchasing, fully loaded family of 4 with bikes hanging on the back. after about 1000 miles of owning and driving the CEL came on. The code was a random tranny code that my online research said may have been caused by heat. I also started to notice that after pulling a grade the tranny didn't like to shift into 4th for some time. I put 10k miles on the van and after reading a ton of posts here and elsewhere decided to go with a cooler and change the ATF and filter with stock VW fluid. After much debate I went with the GW cooler and installed last month on the last warmish day of the year. I am super impressed with the GW kit. bombproof fittings and they only use clamps at the radiator, where they double up on each hose with oetiker style clamps. I decided on the GW with the thermostat because it gets really cold here and I drive to the CO mountains at times in winter. After the install we did a 9 day camping trip to AZ where I put 1400 miles on. We shifted perfectly, no codes and no problems. Tranny temp stayed nice and cool. I would buy this kit again in a heartbeat!
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86 2wd Westy GW2200. 97, 99 02 EVC. Lots and lots of bikes

[Abscate]

[MrPulldown]

When overheating of my tranny occurred outside temp was not a big issue. Though the overheating did not happen in Truckee itself, they were all in the Sierra Nevada Mts and climbing long steep passes. Most actually happened at night.

This is also a camper version, so I al hauling a bit more weight (1K lbs?) up these hills.

The GW cooler was pretty robust except for the stock cooler delete lines. They supply a plastic double barb fitting and some hose clamps. This junction leaked on me this year.

As the supplied fitting was plastic I was not comfortable tightening the clamps too much more (a few turns of the clamp screws did not stop the leak).

Instead a followed KBATTPO lead and deleted the extra unused coolant line and exchanged the plastic "T" fitting for metal ones.
https://www.vwvortex.com/threads/2003-eurovan-various-improvements-to-the-cooling-system.8956625/

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2002 EVC

[orbeamike]

This page off the manual is worth repeating: basically learn to drive the van in manual mode to minimize upshifting and heat build up.

[A2VR6]