My bosses digital camera is a piece of crap, we cant get the pics off of it now that we've taken them, we're still trying, in the mean time heres the howto sans pics.
Transmission Cooler Install
This way will save you from having to cut any of your stock lines incase you are on a lease.
Parts List:
Tranny Cooler From a post by Terry Haines:
Terry suggested either a Hayden 'Ultra-Cool' (#404 side connections) or a 'Rapid-Cool' (#678 bottom connections)
About 6 feet of 3/8 inch transmission hose. (Get longer if you're not sure or your cooler has a bottom feed)
2 hose barbs/adapters One male, one female
4 hose clamps
Teflon tape, or your sealant of choice
Brackets
Sheet metal screws
Zip tie style holders to hold the cooler (will probably come with the cooler, otherwise the guy at the parts shop will know what you need)
Zip ties
Fresh tranny fluid
Tools needed:
3/4 inch wrench
3/8 inch ratchet
Short ratchet extension
8mm socket
Scissors or utility knife
Obligatory Disclaimer: I'm not responsible if you ingest tranny fluid, it tastes nasty, but you'll live, maybe, probably not. Tranny fluid does seem to make good hair conditioner though. Also don't be dumb, and drop your car on yourself. I'm not going to hold your hand through this install, you'll have to figure out some for yourselves, but please ask questions in the forum if you have any)
Step 1) Park on a flat surface, secure your car from rolling (don't be lazy and just set the parking break, chock those back wheels) jack it up, and put jack stands under it.
Step 2) Drain the oil from the transmission through the drain plug. This will keep all the fluid from pouring out of the cooler hoses and help with that fluid ingestion part. Just use the square end of a 3/8 inch ratchet and short extension, no sockets needed on this one.
Step 3) You will probably need to remove some shield right now to access the space behind the bumper. Matt and I didn't need to do this because his 2000 didn't come with it.
(matt, put a smiley here)
Step 4) Crack open a beer with your buddy.
Step 5) Place a pin in the tab in the top of the radiator. (not necessary, we did the install without it, but it's in the Ford manual so it's probably a good idea) This is to keep the radiator from falling down when you remove the bottom support.
Step 6) Remove the two 8mm bolts that hold the lower radiator mount in place, and turn it around so you can access the lower hose connector of the radiator.
Step 7) Undo the flare nut (3/4 inch) that holds the lower tranny cooler return line in the radiator. Be prepared with a bucket for the fluid that will pour out.
Step 8) Time for another beer!
Step 9) Take your two hose adapters, using teflon tape or your sealant of choice, put the adapters onto the tranny hose and into the radiator. Make sure to use sealant, otherwise it will leak and you'll have to do this all again (voice of experience here)
Step 10) Test fit your cooler, and cut the hose to length. We routed them along the same path as the power steering cooler lines. You may place it wherever you wish, we put it in front of the AC condenser but not against it. You don't want to put the cooler against the condensor or ps cooler, because then you will be heating the tranny cooler and it wont do it's job as effectivly.
Step 11) The brackets we used were from a B&M cooler kit, but you can find something similar at a hardware store. The tops were bent over so that we could use sheet metal screws to attach them to the metal behind the bumper.
Step 12) Grab another beer and admire your handy work on those brackets
Step 13) Attach your hoses to the cooler and to the hose adapters and clamp them in place. You might want to orient the hose clamps so that you can undo them later with out removing the cooler. You might need to pop the hard metal line for the tranny out of it's holder and slide it sideways so the hose adapters can clear each other and fit like stock.
Step 14) Attach the cooler to the brackets, we used the black zip cord things that came with the cooler, and used the foam pads to cushion the fins of the cooler.
Step 15) Secure the hoses in place, we used zip ties.
Step 16) Put the radiator mount back in place with the two bolts.
Step 17) If you haven't already, put the drain plug back in place, using some teflon tape to seal it up.
Step 18) Get your funnel out and replace the fluid you took out with 5 quarts of new fluid. (maybe a little more to make up for the fluid that will be in the new cooler and hoses) If you run the engine while doing this, the fluid will be circulated through the transmission and cooler lines and not spill out of any vent holes. This is a problem when refilling transmissions that are completely drained and might not apply here, but it couldn't hurt. If you're feeling ambitious (read drunk) you could replace all your fluid with the hoses attached to the adapters and not the cooler.
Step 19) Take those jack stands out from under there, and drop, I mean lower(!) the car back down. (not the voice of experience here, but I like seeing the look on Matt's face when I suggest something like this around his car.
Step 20) You guessed it, one more beer. Unless you're going to go test drive the car, in that case skip all the beers and have your sweetie make you some kool-aid.
Notes: This install went fairly easy for us, and looks very clean. Its hard to tell that anything was done even from underneath except for the bright shinny cooler. A black one would probably be completely stealth. We only had a few problems. We ran into some trouble when we were getting the new hoses onto the cooler, they were a very tight fit. We tried heat, grease and stretching out the hose with a larger bolt. In the end it just took time to get it on. We also had some trouble getting to the flare nut on the radiator until we moved the mount out of the way. We also put the cooler inline after the stock one in the radiator. This will let the radiator pull a lot of heat out of the fluid and let the new one do the rest, as opposed to taking the heat out of the fluid and then putting it back in when it flows through the radiator. This will also help in the winter in that the fliud will be warmed up faster in the radiator to get the tranny up to operating temp. All in all this is an easy job that just about anyone could do, you just need a little know how and a few simple tools. If you need help enlist a friend, that's how I keep ending up working on Matt's car.
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Chlorine & SpeedDemon
(Dan & Matt)
Thanks, Matt I will have to try this. 