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10R80 Automatic Trans Cooling Questions

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I have an 18 GT with a 10 speed and have really been bitten by the HPDE bug. On occasion the tranny temp will get up to around 250. It normally runs 210ish on the track, but on larger tracks with more turns (I was at NCM last weekend) it got pretty hot quick as it was working overtime.

I was thinking about adding an additional remote cooler with the fan controlled via a thermostat ground switch like my full tilt boogie rear diff cooler set up as that works very slick for the rear diff. My questions are about mounting the remote cooler. I don't want to add more "stacked" coolers to impede air flow to the current coolers and was thinking about mounting a remote cooler perpendicular to the radiator/condenser behind the crash bar. I was thinking this because the area is pretty open and I could build a bracket to mount to the crash bar itself. As air flowed over the top of the crash bar through the upper grill section, when the them controller kicked the fan on I would think it would pull air from that area and blow it downward. This way it had cooler air around this area to tap into for the fan pickup etc.

The other area of interest was in front of the passenger side wheel well as it has a bit of open area in that section but no real natural air flow to that area. Anyone who has ideas or expertise in building and working on cooling systems I would appreciate your input on this conversation.

I like keeping things cool and at ideal operation temps as I know it needs that to live so this is why I am interested in doing this versus blowing it up and letting warranty deal with it. lol Thanks in advance!
 

Mad Hatter

Gotta go Faster
5,237
4,227
Santiago, Chile
in for the solution!! Have several friends with the new 10spd and they all have major heating problems... Driven hard they do not get more then three laps. On the 6R80 we found moving the oil cooler from behind the bumper directly into fresh air keeps that tranny cool at the track. But stock, the 6R80 took about 12 laps to overheat.
 
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Anyone know what Shelby American is doing on the supercharged Super Snake 10 speeds to cool them for the track? I can't imagine them not doing anything.
 

Mad Hatter

Gotta go Faster
5,237
4,227
Santiago, Chile
Yup they are just HPDE cars so far! One S550 with de 6spd auto is starting to give me some reason to head out and practice though!!
 

Grant 302

basic and well known psychic
Thanks, have some five 10spd mustangs looking for cooling solutions.

Look to Grant for the loco solutions. :D

The first and obvious are the increased cooling capacity and fluid capacity. My only suggestion here is 'yes, do that'.

Second, less conventional solution: Talk to your tuner. Yes, tuner. Now I haven't been doing tuning for ages, and that was with the ancient 4R70W, but the same stuff applies. Look at the lock-up strategy/tables or however they're programmed now. Lock it up as soon or as much as possible. Heat mainly comes from the converter and the more you lock it, the more direct power you put down and the less you shear/work the fluid in the converter. Less of that equals less heat generated and energy wasted.

Third and probably unlikely to *ever* be used solution: Build a tighter converter. Talk to somebody like Circle D and do the exact opposite of the drag racers. My understanding is that the stock converter is pretty 'tight' but discussion with somebody who builds them would or should know and might be interested in the project.

Hear me now. Believe me later. - Hanz and Franz
 
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Exp. Type
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5-10 Years
Philly Metro Area
Have them put the Velcro sealed heat shield tubing around the trans lines near the engine especially if they are still running with cats. The lines are only about an inch sway.

Mishimoto also makes a replacement external trans cooler for the 15-17 6R80s that is larger than the OEM cooler. I do not see anything equivalent for the 10R80.

https://www.mishimoto.com/ford-mustang-transmission-cooler-2015.html

Running that in series with another external cooler behind the grill will help even more.
 
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So here’s what I have done up to this point and it seems to be working very well!

I used Derale 40 row stacked coolers. One for the trans and the other for the oil. I used a setrab oil filter sandwich plate with a 180* thermostat. I liked this plate as it would bleed a bit before the therm opened up to warm the oil in the cooler rather than cooler oil shocking the system. Both of these coolers hold a quart of fluid which to me is helpful. Any increase in capacity will help with temps. I used -10 AN fittings and lines on the oil side. Lots of people said I should have went -12 but the coolers and sandwich plates use -10’o ring ports so that seemed to be the bottle neck in the system so I made the decision I did based off of that. On the trans side I used -8 as the hard line on the factory cooler is half inch. I spliced into the hardline with AN tube nuts and sleeves after flaring the hard line with a AN glaring tool. Then I used the -8 male/male unions which allowed me to hook in the AN lines and hose ends I put together.

I mounted the cooler setup to the crash bar much like an intercooler would.

I knew I would need more air flow to the coolers so I chose a cervinis c series grill delete setup. This opens up the lower grill a lot and I feel it helps. I am worried about lift and an looking into hood vents but the jury is out this far.

I wanted a slick brake cooling setup but no one makes anything for the 18+ bumper as far as inlets go that I think looks good as no one makes a commercially available magnaride backing plate for these spindles so I decided to make something up. I had a buddy 3d print me an inlet. I originally wanted the entire area to be a scupper but I git only half the inlet. So them to block off the open area as to not get air into the fender well area. I used kydex to accomplish this task and get a plastic of similar color and texture as the factory plastics.

The entire set up is working very well. Last weekend at the Mustang Club of America event at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka Kansas we had ambient air temps between 97-101 degrees. The trans temps during 20 minute sessions would hold steady at 210-215! To me this is great. Before in the middle of a session it would creep up to 240 and at 230 it starts delaying shifts etc. I don’t have to have a mandatory cool down lap or two in the middle of sessions any more.

I don’t have an oil temp gauge so I can’t say much about that but my coolant temps run straight up so I think not having the factory tranny cooler wedged between the condenser and radiator helps not heat soak the upper radiator and not running coolant through the oil filter housing has to release some taxing heat soak on the coolant side as well.

This is my findings up to this point. Any critiques and criticisms are welcomed!
 

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