Tranny cooler installation

[SummitUp]

Originally Posted by chris4851

I will be installing a tranny cooler soon. I had a couple questions before I placed the order. I live in Massachusetts, would you recommend the bypass? What exactly is the benifit of the bypass? Even if you live in a vey cold climate is there a downside not having the bypass?

I was looking into purchasing the Flex-a-lite 4120, how has this cooler been working out?

I can't speak for the the Flex-a-lite 4120 as I purchased the Tru-Cool Max cooler. I live at 9000ft. elevation in the Colorado Rockies (yeah, it gets real cold here on occasion!), so I ordered my cooler with the bypass option. The bypass is supposed to work in the same way the coolant thermostat in your engine works, i.e. it wont open to allow free flow of tranny fluid until the tranny has reached operating temperature.

However... I had nothing but problems with the bypass on my cooler. Tranny usually ran way too hot, so much so I thought the bypass unit was defective so I ordered a replacement. The replacement bypass unit wasn't any different and the tranny temps were still way too high even in cold weather so I re-plumbed my cooler without the bypass and never looked back.

Yes on really cold days it takes much longer for the tranny to "warm up" but in my case I never take my H2 on short trips so it doesn't really matter to me. What does matter to me is I wheel my "Deuce" hard on trails in Moab often in hot weather conditions so I need maximum flow of tranny fluid through the cooler and that isn't going to happen with the restriction the bypass unit places in the circuit.

Just my $.02