Installing A Transmission Cooler In a Gen 2 Taurus

Well, I'll make this short- the Taurus transmissions, espcially in the Gen 1 and 2 family, are notorious for producing a lot of heat, poor shifting characteristics, and ultimately transmission failure. This is basically due to some poor design choices from the factory, but one of the more popular modifications to help alleviate this is the installation of a transmission cooler. This is furthered by the fact that my particular car has the 3.8l V6 making 200+ ft./lbs of torque - not good for the AXOD transmission it's mated too (this goes for ATX SHO's as well though they are beefed up a little bit more)

Basically, a transmission cooler acts as a second (in this case, third because Taurii have a dinky tranny cooler that goes after the radiator) radiator to help further cooler the oil in the transmission. I choose to use the ATX cooler found in the Police Package Taurus mainly because it looks OEM once installed, and it goes right in the middle of the sole air inlet in the front fascia (which allows for more cool air to flow through the cooler as opposed to the aftermarket designs mounted higher up and closer to the A/C condensor). The cooler measures 26"X3.5"X1", but is an older tube and fin design compared to the more efficient stacked plates used by Jegs and B&M.

Here's a quick rundown of the installation of this cooler:

Here's the cooler as it came from someone at SHOforum.com (thanks Justin!). Total price was $38 for shipping, lines with barbed fittings and clamps, so it was an OK deal. It looks a little beat up, but the most important part was that there were relatively few bent fins.

Here it is after several thin coats of high-temp BBQ paint with the lines attached. The lines are 3/8" with 3/8" brass barbed fittings to splice into the transmission rubber lines.

First thing's first; mounting the cooler. Well, I took the advice of the person I bought the cooler from and took the two tabs that are on the A/C condenser mounts and bent them forward until they were parallel with the ground (used a couple of vice grips). There's part of the rubber bushing that goes in between the mount and the A/C condeser that over laps into where the cooler will sit so I just cut the excess off. Then drilled 2 holes for each tab (after lining it up with the cooler bracket's holes) and then used a grinder to get the rust off of that general area and sprayed over with black paint.

Then it was just a matter of sliding the cooler into place, and then using some nuts and bolts (the cooler already had clips to accept the bolts, but I used nuts on top of that just to be extra secure) to secure the cooler to the tabs.

Here it is finally mounted, looking from underneath the car and from the driver's side. I also used washers because I did not line the holes up perfectly in the beginning and had to enlarge them so I can move the cooler around :o.

Here's another picture of the mounting from the front of the car, looking through that slit under the bumper.

Okay, now that the mounting is done, its time to splice the transmission lines. I was very tentative about doing this since I've had past (bad) experience with the tranny leaking and all that. Well, it was mounted already, so might as well make it actually work, right? :P Just remember to put a pan or something under the line before you cut as some fluid will drip out. Wait 5-10 minutes and it should slow enough for you to work.

First's thing's first; which is the return line? Many people have suggested tapping into the return line to get the most cooling efficiency. To find out which is the return line, turn on the car, put it in Drive then let it stand for about 10-20 seconds. Then put it back in Park and go under the car and feel which cooler line is hotter. The hotter line is the send line, so the cooler line is the return line. After doing this many times (I wasnt sure if it was just the heat from the engine that I was feeling), the return line is the upper rubber hose seen in the picture (the one that is brighter than the other). This picture was taken from underneath the car and on the driver's side.

Well all that feeling for which one is the return line turned out to be pointless because I ended up splicing into the send line (figures -_-;) because it was longer and I thought it would be easier to insert the barbs in there. It turns out that the lines were 5/16" (as I thought originally) so I could only get 3 out of the 4 barbs in. I ended up covering the remaining barb with some left over ruber hose and a ziptie. Picture taken from directly under the car, driver's side. It would be good to put a thin coat of transmission fluid on the barbs so that they will be easier to slide in. In hindsight, I would have used some 5/16 steel brake lines to go in between the send line and the ruber hose since it would have been much easier to insert into the rubber hoses, plus as someone on TCCA pointed out, it would add additional cooling to the fluid. I might do this in the future. The other hose was connected to the rubber hose coming from the transmission.

Here's a view from the side showing the cooler lines coming from the cooler to the splice behind the radiator. Note the plastic covering to prevent the rubber lines from coming into contact with the frame, and since I was an idiot, I didn't have enough straight rubber hose to connect the cooler to the hose coming from the transmission, so I joined two, shorter rubber hoses with barb fittings and inserted that.

Now its just a matter of checking all the hoses and fittings are secure, firing up the car and driving around for about 10 minutes then go under the car and check for leaks. I found a persistently slow leak from the top hose and the cooler, so later on, I used some teflon tape and wrapped it around the cooler fitting and reinserted the hose. Again, in hindsight I would suggest to anyone to wrap the cooler fittings in teflon tape to ensure leak free connection with the hoses.

Hope this helps anyone planning to do this simple modification! It takes no more than 1-2 hours to install really, if you're being careful and if you bent and drilled the tabs to mount the cooler. It took longer for me as I was basically making it up as I went along. ^_^