Bought a "heavy duty" transmission cooler for my truck and it was a total dud

I spent $180 on a fancy stacked-plate transmission cooler off Amazon last month for my F-150. Figured it would keep my temps way down when I tow my camper up some hills here in Phoenix. Installed it in my driveway over a weekend, took like 6 hours with all the hose cutting and mounting. First trip up to Flagstaff and my transmission temp hit 220 degrees, which is worse than my stock cooler ever did. Turns out the thing was cheaply made inside and the flow was all restricted. I lost 30 bucks in transmission fluid too from bleeding the lines. So now I'm back to square one and out the cash and time. Has anyone else had luck with a specific brand that actually works for towing in hot weather?

3 comments

3 Comments

cameron_hernandez6913h agoMost Upvoted

Respectfully, sounds like you installed it wrong or got a bad unit.

jordan_hill6h ago

I had a buddy install one of those in his F150 back in 2020. Three months later it started acting up, throwing codes left and right. He's a pretty handy dude too, not his first rodeo with car stuff. Swapped it for a different brand and zero issues since then, so maybe it's a crapshoot with certain batches. Just my two cents though, could be totally different for someone else.

hannah_wells9h ago

Hey @cameron_hernandez69, have you seen a lot of those units fail or just this one?