can i put a cooler on my 5 speed? it uses regular auto fluid,but i dont know anything about how to cool it. i have seen trans coolers before but i dont know where to start.

anyone got any thoughts?

 

since your manual is a bath type oil system and not a pressurized system like an automatic moving the oil to and from the cooler would need to be resolved, as well as where you'd attach the lines, but there's no reason you couldn't do it if you made the modifications for it.

 

I guess you could use a regular trans cooler and set up an electric pump to move the fluid through the system. Then just drill and tap 2 lines into your tranny for the lines.

 

Why would you need it.

 

Good question...

If your manual trans gets hot enough to need a cooler you have some problems

 

Heat is not nearly as much of a problem for a manual trans as it is for an automatic. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

why not have a cooler? my vans trans starts sticking and acting funny when i drive it too long in city traffic on a hot day,its an astro with a 3.8 and a 5 speed. it does fine on the hiway and for trips less then an hour.

and my car does some of the same stuff when i drive it in the city on a hot day for hours.

cooler is better for lubricants any way. plus with a pump it would need a filter so it would be cleaner ,too.

sounds like a win/win to me.

 

Do what you want, but the gains likely won't be worth the effort. The only time you'd be worried about the temperature of a manual transmission would be if you're road racing at high speeds for hours at a time or something. If you want to keep it clean, change it at the recommended intervals.

 

like apeiron said keep the oil changed and you'll have a lot less problems. does it use atf or gear oil? i'm guessing gear oil, if so try some m1. when was the last time you changed the oil?

 

Moreover, what Astro ever came with a 231 and a manual trans?

 

cooler on a stick????

I am not gonna lie, I used to think about doing this untill I learned that there is no point. The trans doens't get too hot unless there are other problems.

Last time I herd a manual tranny getting acctually hot was on a McClaren F1 on a test drive as they pushed it to its limits. I am pretty sure your astro van isn't preforming like that just yet. hehe. j/k. But for real, If you wanna do this just use the fill and drain plugs and in and outlets. Then run a pump of some kind to a cooler. The tranny runs off normal ATF. If you think that is it really the temp getting up there that is causing problems try this....

Take the drain plug, tap it to recieve a temp sender, then run a normal autometer guage and see what you get, if it is getting too hot then run a cooler. I am 99.9% sure that something else is getting hot and causing problems.