Bored and looking to waste money! ok mostly kidding
I was wondering if anyone who regularly tracks our cars runs a transmission cooler or even a diff cooler. I seem to recall a thread where hustler said a temp sticker on his tranny showed north of 250 degrees. Do you think a cooler would reduce transmission failures or do you just change the fluid more frequently?

 

Ive been thinking of doing a diff and tranny cooler, but its toward the bottom of the list.

 

Build a large box around the tranny with a small weep hole near the top of the box. Cut a moderately sized opening out just ahead of your gear shift turret (build a funnel/pipe if you need too) so that you can reach the transmission from the cockpit. Buy a large bag of "rock salt". Before you get to the track, stop by a gas station and buy a dozen "big bags" of ice - throw them on your tire trailer/passengers seat/trunk/roof/whatever. While on the track, keep a bag of ice and the bag of rock salt in the passengers seat. Everytime you cross the start/finish line of the racetrack dump 1/4 bag of ice into the hole, followed by about a cup of salt.

By the time you get done with your session, you'll have track-made ice cream!!

***as an added bonus, your cooling problems will be gone too!***

 

Lols didnt expect the end.

 

I use a Manuel transmission cooler. My transmission has never been cooler thanks to that mexican.

 

It's worse than that - TrackDayHookey stuck a temp probe in his and measured fluid temps of over 340*F.

I sent my oil into Blackstone when I popped my tranny last year - no insolubles or viscosity breakdown, so the fluid isn't actually "overheating", but IMO a cooler would probably still help. If we can keep bearing temps down and keep the gears meshed better, reliability/longevity goes up.

IMO, track cars over 300whp should consider diff and tranny coolers. Even SM guys see high diff temps. It's something I will get around to this year - we'll have a kit for ~$500 with a pump, cooler, filter, and the necessary fittings.

 

Did you buy it at home depot?

 

I think you ment in front of home depot

 

I've been thinking about this also. I wonder what the diff temps get up to...I've had a auto trans cooler sitting on my workbench begging me to install it.

 

Why not use thermal epoxy to glue fins one them? You can easily double or triple the surface area to the airflow by doing this.

 

You could cut a heatsink like this into long narrow inch-wide strips, with 3-4 fins on a strip, and glue them between the ribs of the tranny and/or diff

 

Simple glue would insulate and not transfer heat. There's got to be some kind of heat transfer adhesive available to use. I've used small heat sinks on RAM chips that had a tape with heat transfer ability.

 

Thermal tape has very poor heat conductivity compared to the various thermally conductive chemical adhesives available, there's even conductive epoxy, but last time I checked it was in the 10$ range for just a few ounces.

I used to work for an HVAC companies "special projects" department making weird heating and cooling solutions, this is the one area I might be able to provide advice in.

 

once you clean off and plane the surface that you want to mount said heatsink to, you'll want to spread an extremely thin layer of thermally conductive paste (not adhesive) to the heatsink and then bolt the heatsink to the machined surface using holes drilled through the housing and tapped...

Or you could do it the easy way, and use an external pump and cooler...

 

A thin layer of thermal epoxy to attach the heat sink will work fine. Epoxies do not conduct heat as well as aluminum but if the layer is thin, and there is a lot of surface area, the delta-T will be low enough not to matter much.

A pump and a well placed cooler is more complex to implement but will work much better.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't focus too much on epoxies and heat sinks. Yes you may eventually get it to work, but you could throw a tried and trusted cooler/pump system in and have much better results.

 

Someone does it already, beetches:

http://www.turbomagazine.com/tech/08.../photo_08.html

 

That is a less than stellar testing methodology used in that article combined with anecdotal data. At any rate a cooler (fluid to air heat exchanger) is going to work much better. There is no way those fins on my oil pan would lower engine oil temperatures by 70F+ like the oil cooler does.

 

Agreed about not being as effective as an extra cooler with pump.

The Q is, maybe this will do 10-20* improvement, with low cost and simplicity.

 

They will drop a 10 or so degree difference. We use them on experimental trans. tests. I would not expect the tape to hold up under road conditions for very long though.