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10R80 Automatic Trans Cooling Questions

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I thought he was working on a finned aluminum pan...or there was some discussion on it.

There is an issue there, I was talking with Flyhalf, Paul Forte of Turbo Action and a guy named John Heinricy about all of this. IT seems that this trans was developed between Ford and GM, the GM builds about 4 versions of this, depending on whether it goes into a ZL1 or a pickup truck, sometimes the cases are different depending on the amount of clutch discs and whatever. In short, if the trans just dumps and quits working, or working intermittently then it's pulling the pan dry, if there are other symptoms then it's probably a heat issue, you should get a trans overheat light on the dash, then the car will go to limp mode. So far, no one is complaining about the first issue so the second is where the priority lies. One thing I wanted to do is try to get a pan off a ZL1 and see if it will bolt on the Ford version, because that pan appears to be deeper, but then you'd also have to extend the oil pickup deeper into the pan to be useful. It's hard to get a Chevy dealer to let you "borrow" a special order pan to try on a Ford product to see if the bolts even match up. Also JH mentioned that you could overheat the GM trans is a couple of laps if you really pushed it, so the problem seems to be across the board.
A real trick guy like Sal could probably take a mustang pan and section it, making it deeper, and machine a pickup to extend the filter into the pan, but these transmissions use 2 oil pumps, and am not sure if they use the same pickup scheme for both pumps. The trannies seem to be pretty simple overall though, a lot of electronic crap to boil in the oil and go bad, but the other stuff is pretty straight forward.
Basically, somebody with a lot of time and experience just needs to develop this trans, but a expensive as they are it will be difficult and expensive to do.

 
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Grant 302

basic and well known psychic
Thanks for the video Rob, and I don't mean to be dismissive about a modified pan, but it seems to me that there isn't a lot of real estate for a bigger or deeper pan or lots of added fin surface. The problem I see with a bigger pan is that it's essentially hot fluid storage, so it would delay the time to overheat but essentially be the same once it does. I see it (the 10R) mechanically the same as any other automatic, just more shift clutches used in pairs for gear selection. I think lil'Zeus went in the right direction with (massive) cooler sizing and using 'first air' for it. If I were to add any more fluid capacity, it would be on the 'cold' side of the cooler in a separate reservoir. Maybe stick it in a fender well. Just my thoughts. I don't plan on going back to automatics any time soon...so I haven't kept up with all the internal improvements up to the 10R.
 
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Thanks for the video Rob, and I don't mean to be dismissive about a modified pan, but it seems to me that there isn't a lot of real estate for a bigger or deeper pan or lots of added fin surface. The problem I see with a bigger pan is that it's essentially hot fluid storage, so it would delay the time to overheat but essentially be the same once it does. I see it (the 10R) mechanically the same as any other automatic, just more shift clutches used in pairs for gear selection. I think lil'Zeus went in the right direction with (massive) cooler sizing and using 'first air' for it. If I were to add any more fluid capacity, it would be on the 'cold' side of the cooler in a separate reservoir. Maybe stick it in a fender well. Just my thoughts. I don't plan on going back to automatics any time soon...so I haven't kept up with all the internal improvements up to the 10R.

Like I said, the pan would be item 2 on the mod list, the first would be more cooling, I only mentioned it because sooner or later, somebody is going to try it and I wanted to lay some groundwork. Extra capacity pan will not really help the heat situation, but it might benefit it a little bit. More importantly, it would prevent the pickup from running dry when the car's suspension is improved, FWIW a certain Corvette at Nürburgring had a "deflector" panel (for lack of a better term) installed to prevent the pan from bottoming out.
Again, I'm not sure of the difference between the ZL1 pan and the GT Mustang, other than I think the ZL1 pan is deeper, so there is some reason for it. What would be cool is if the oil filter and the pan from the GM would fit right on to the Mustang, that would be a cheap and fast mod worth doing.
 
I spoke with derale about building a pan for the mustang but they don’t have it in the works as of now. The cooling style they utilize is very interesting with tubes running through the base of the pan to increase surface area and fresh air running through the tubes.

Back 20 years ago we would use 4x4 pans offnof trucks to aid in deeper pans etc and use the truck filters. I went this route and had my ford service manager dig into this a bit and from what I can tell off the measurements he sent me ford uses the same pan in the mustang as the truck.
 
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I spoke with derale about building a pan for the mustang but they don’t have it in the works as of now. The cooling style they utilize is very interesting with tubes running through the base of the pan to increase surface area and fresh air running through the tubes.

Back 20 years ago we would use 4x4 pans offnof trucks to aid in deeper pans etc and use the truck filters. I went this route and had my ford service manager dig into this a bit and from what I can tell off the measurements he sent me ford uses the same pan in the mustang as the truck.

Those have been around since the 60s, just nothing for newer cars
 

Grant 302

basic and well known psychic
Looks like a pretty clear no on the cross bolting. Comparing the video you linked and the same company doing a GM tear-down:

Ford 10R80 vs GM 10L90 pans.png


The other GM tear-down video:
 
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Well back to the drawing board, it was a lot nicer in the 60s..70s..80s when at least some parts were carried over for a few years, now it seems they get changed every 10 minutes whether there is a reason to or not.
 

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