Transmission coolers
 

I'm thinking about adding a trans cooler, but there seems to be a zillion different options. What's a good one for my car?

best flowing tranny cooler that Actually cools the fluid is a "radiator" style cooler. it will have 2 tanks setup like a radiator is. the Tube style are more compact but i have found they dont drop the fluid temps as well as the rad style. get a decent quality one like a Be Cool or B&M. hope it helps.

What I read was that a "plate" cooler is a better design, is that the kind you're referring to?

Something like this maybe?

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/BMM-70268/

I also read that the less restriction, the better. Found a lot of good info from Performabuilt on LS1Tech:

http://www.ls1tech.com/forums/automa...lush-more.html

yeah that is what i mean as far as a cooler goes. the tube style are cheaper BUT it makes the fluid take a lot of 180* turns. that alone is inefficient. i like B&Ms coolers. and there not Super bloated on price.

my buddy and I built one for his. got all the parts from separate vendors and only ended up saving $30-40 in the long run, but it was basically the B&M cooler with custom steal braided lines.

go to NAPA and look at the RV coolers
I got one in my car and it does drop the temp conciderably and they are only 35 bucks.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HDA-403/

My buddy put one on his car recently because he was boiling the fluid. Now its warm and you're able to touch the fluid easily.

thats the one I got in my car.
works great!

that's the tube type it will work ok but the threw fin type is more efficient due to its better flow characteristics. most of the time it is fine to run the tube type and then run it threw the radiator after to stabilize the temps. you can over cool the fluid and induce thermal shock if it is a real cold day but that's usually only on things like plow trucks and such.

Yeah one of the things I read in that big thread I linked was that you want as little resistance to flow as possible, so it is better to use the plate style cooler and bypass the cooler in the radiator. I think that's what I'm gonna end up doing. Probably change the filter at the same time.