Transaxle cooler

[andreikoc]

Hi Guys,
Is a transaxle cooler necessary or even desirable for a street car?

Craig

 

[junior]

Very desirable, and why not, the cooler the better, I have Kendall's (nota4re on this forum) installed by Kendall on mine, zero issues.

http://www.cooltechllc.com/ford/gt_transaxle_cooler.shtml

 

[nota4re]

Here's an impractical challenge. Take any 10 GT's put them up on 10 lifts and drop the rear pans on each of them. Any one of us who regularly maintain GT's can walk down the row of the 10 lifted GT's and tell you which GT has a cooler and which does not. Those cars that have a film of transaxle fluid accumulated across the bottom edge of the transaxle will be the cars that have no cooler. The cars with a dry as a baby's butt transaxle will be the cars that have a cooler. Another visual clue is up top - especially easy to see when the airbox is removed. The non-cooler equipped cars will have a much higher propensity to show fluid weeping up and out of the shift linkage shafts. The weeping fluid tends to attract a lot of dirt and so the evidence is pretty easy to see. GT's driven even moderately in 80F+ weather should have a cooler installed. If you seldom drive in warm weather and/or your GT is only driven in annual parades and such, then a cooler may not be needed. For the former category, even moderate street driving causes the transaxles to run at high temperatures. (This is compounded for modified GTs which place higher heat dissipation demands on the drivetrain - hence the reason for Ford's recommendation of a transaxle cooler prior to pulley/tune upgrades.) Anyway, the high transaxle temps tend to vaporize the fluid and these vapors escape both through the vents and through the aforementioned shift linkage seals. Hence the external film of oil. The addition of a transaxle cooler - with its inherent 20% (0.8 quarts) increase in fluid capacity substantially addresses the fluid vaporization (i.e. high heat) and the weeping will stop. At a replacement cost of $10,000 for the transaxle, it would seem that the addition of a cooler is cheap insurance. Other than a slightly lighter wallet, there is no downside to having a cooler installed on the car.

 

[Xcentric]

Interesting. Who here has has a transaxle failure?

 

[jaxgt]

Put the transaxle cooler on for all the reasons Kendall said. Looks cool too.

In addition, I hear a replacement transaxle is closer to $15k plus install, if you can even find one.

 

[GT1261]

I bought a cooler from Kendall.
My GT have never been tracked but the empty space where you install the cooler is really poor without a cool black cooler.
The second GT in our garage has a Ford Racing T.A. cooler and I think as many others that the cooltech's one is much better looking ans also mounted with a better angle. They will fill up that annoying empty space behind the air duct.

Do it !!!

 

[Specracer]

My opinion, Kendall's looks nicer with an fittings and braided lines. But I preferred the OEM look of the hard lines and compression fit hoses.

Either one works well, and should be done.

 

[Indy GT]

My opinion, Kendall's looks nicer with an fittings and braided lines. But I preferred the OEM look of the hard lines and compression fit hoses.

Either one works well, and should be done.

I agree with Andy and have the Ford Racing cooler as well. Kendall's product is well engineered and fine as well. I installed the FR cooler early into my GT ownership and it was so long ago I am not sure the CoolTech product was even available at that time.

The transaxle cooler was originally speced to be on our car but price point requirements of the car when introduced necessitated its deletion as OE on all cars. In my discussions with the design team, the cooler is highly recommended by Ford by anyone who tracks their GT. Otherwise street use only is nice-to-have. However, all the guidance listed by Kendall in his above post is accurate. Oh, and many of us owners suggest only using the Motorcraft GT transaxle fluid developed specifically by Ricardo for our transmission. (not to open a can of worms)

 

[GT1261]

I think that the price for the T.A. cooler for the GTs is very very low compared to other car brands.
Think I payed 3k+ for the one I had on the GT-R and it was not even good.
GT-R tranny cocks after two laps on the Nordschleife with me behind the wheel.

A well known rally driver told me that on one season they used like 4-5 gearboxes, then they added coolers to the new one and
it stayed in one piece the whole season.

Since then I will have it on all my high hp cars.

Cheers

 

[Sinovac]

Are the Ford coolers still available? I know Ford discontinued them some time ago.

 

[texas mongrel]

Track your car hard on a warm day for about about an hour on a second and third-type course without a transaxle cooler. your clutch fluid will boil and you'll lose your clutch til everything cools down. Now do the same with a cooler - no problems!

 

[BelgianGT]

Are you saying a cooler helps to save on the clutch lifespan?

 

[nota4re]

Are you saying a cooler helps to save on the clutch lifespan?

What Mongrel was referring to was the symptom of a heat-soaked transaxle contributing to the boiling of the hydraulic clutch (brake) fluid resulting in the temporary loss of the clutch pedal. Once everything has a chance to cool off, the clutch pedal would likely return but you'd probably want to bleed the air out of the system when you got home. Many GT's experienced this problem in Rally 2 when a large group of us shot up Angeles Crest Highway and then stopped and had lunch at the top of the mountain road. Many owners stepped out of their cars and remarked that they had "lost" their clutch pedal a time or two during the windy climb up the hill. Many others of us experienced no such problems. It took a few minutes of conversation to determine that only those that were without a transaxle cooler were effected. All of the others were fine. The cooler WILL make a big difference in the operating temperature of the transaxle as well as under-clamshell temps.

 

[BelgianGT]

I'll need to consider that then. I did several ralleys with mine and beside some bad smell there was nothing strange going on. It's not because one doesn' t feel anything abnormal that all is working properly. On an airplance strip we were having fun and than she really smelled bad... among bruned rubber and a smell I couldn't identify till later when a buddyt burned up his clutch. THe safer thing to do is probably add such a cooler and a stillen clutch on her.

 

[twobjshelbys]

What Mongrel was referring to was the symptom of a heat-soaked transaxle contributing to the boiling of the hydraulic clutch (brake) fluid resulting in the temporary loss of the clutch pedal. Once everything has a chance to cool off, the clutch pedal would likely return but you'd probably want to bleed the air out of the system when you got home. Many GT's experienced this problem in Rally 2 when a large group of us shot up Angeles Crest Highway and then stopped and had lunch at the top of the mountain road. Many owners stepped out of their cars and remarked that they had "lost" their clutch pedal a time or two during the windy climb up the hill. Many others of us experienced no such problems. It took a few minutes of conversation to determine that only those that were without a transaxle cooler were effected. All of the others were fine. The cooler WILL make a big difference in the operating temperature of the transaxle as well as under-clamshell temps.

This is what was related to me. It's an ambient temperature issue, not fully a track issue. I had one put on my car and never had problems and we did some pretty twisty turney mountain road driving last summer.

 

[BlackICE]

Mark McGowen drove the sh*t out of the cars included 212 mph at Nardo. Some with and some without the coolers. There were no transaxle failures due to overheated transaxle oil. So Ford decided that the cooler wasn't required by the "average" customer.

EP would never need one.

That said, I do have a FRPP cooler on my car.

 

[RALPHIE]

3 items that I know of: The original design considerations for the Ford GT included (1) the transaxle cooler, (2) a Gurney bubble, and (3) front brake air ducts. Each was eliminated from the final design for reasons of cost, non-necessity & allocated space being usurped by other design factors. However, each can still be installed on our cars by various vendors - Cooltech, Discovery Automotive and the GT Guy.

The number 2 car has all three!

View attachment 28027

View attachment 28028

View attachment 28029

Oops - a 4th item - the higher performance pulley & tune -

View attachment 28030

 

[fjpikul]

Hey Ralphie, Mr. Enginere, you cooler is not hooked up. There's no lines going into it.

 

[Superfly]

^^ He did say his car has it, not that it's hooked up. LOL. Well, 2 outta 3 ain't bad.

As an aside, Ralphie, all your brackets are silver. Did you paint them or did some cars (05?) come with silver brackets instead of black?

 

[RALPHIE]

Hey Ralphie, Mr. Enginere, you cooler is not hooked up. There's no lines going into it.

Back in 2007, I installed the cooler and then bought 2 AN caps to cover the fittings - then took it to my dealer's mechanic to have the lines installed, 400 miles away.

...As an aside, Ralphie, all your brackets are silver. Did you paint them or did some cars (05?) come with silver brackets instead of black?

The FRPP cooler and brackets came with silver bracketry to match the rest of the engine compartment (except the mounting bolt they sent was Black - go figure).