I’ve actually seen those before. Thanks for the reminder, I’ll check them out again.

A lot of this info is posted in my build thread, but I know a few people have been following this thread only.

Finally received my Derale stacked plate cooler. Very nicely built, and quite large compared to the old Trans cooler I thought was “big.”

Only real problem I ran into was having no place to mount the OEM PS cooler. Instead of cutting up the OEM cooler and bracket, I set it aside for now. I repurposed the old trans cooler as our new PS cooler,

Fab work is not my strong area, but everything is cleanly mounted, there is a small space between the radiator and Tranny cooler, and the PS cooler does not block the Tranny cooler.

Old set up out.


The new larger cooler.




Mounted up, with the PS cooler nest to it, and tucked out of the way.






I still need to plumb everything. I thought the tranny hard lines were 3/8, but they’re actually 1/4. I still want to use 3/8,so I’ll just buy a small section of 1/4, and transition the hose.

I’ll post more photos when it’s all plumbed up.

Looks good, we did the same and made our old trans cooler into the PS cooler.

We have the new derale cooler mounted underneath the car but cant get any testing before our Charlotte motor speedway roval race. So we did the sensible thing and left the other two coolers and now we have 3. We did take it out of teh radiator since we are pushing the motor harder and dont want overheating issues.

if it cools fine then we will eliminate the smaller cooler and then keep going until there is 1 or all three still left. The temps have been fairly mild at low 90s but it very well could be 100 ish so who knows.

Very interesting thread. That is one beefy cooler! Curious what the temps will be like now.
You mentioned your car was formerly a San Juoquin county "dog car". How was the interior when you purchased it? Did you just strip it all out for weight reduction? I don't think I've ever seen a surplus k9 unit that wasn't totally disgusting.

It was very smelly, and full of dog hair. That is part of the reason we got it so cheap at auction. Most auction cars in this area go for $1500-2500 depending on mileage and overall condition.

Our car was only $950, partly because it was a dog car, and partly because the auction house couldn’t get the monitors to reset so it wouldn’t pass smog. I was able to get the monitors to reset and smog it within a week of picking it up.

The dog smell is gone, because the interior is gone, but what’s funny is we still occasionally have a random chunk of dog hair appear from out of nowhere.

If I was buying one of these cars to drive every day, or as a project, I’d probably think twice about bidding on a dog car.

One issue witn a k9 car would be it may not have the rear seat. They normally don't have carpet outside of someone putting a removeable pad down. How the car smells or cleaned in general would depend on the officer and department.

I agree. But back seats are easy to find, the big issue with dog cars is where all the hair ends up. I found hair under the floor liner, stuck in the headliner, and in every crack and crevice. There was even hair in the H-Vac system.

Even if the car was cleaned regularly, and thoroughly, I’m not sure you could get all the hair and smell out.

If the car was cheap enough and in good mechanical shape, I’d say go for it, but expect to remove and clean/replace most of the interior. (Which actually isn’t hard once you’ve done it.) Including the dash.

We just finished racing at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. I have the same cooler as traffic but with the 180 degree thermostat and fan. We still have our medium and small trans coolers mounted infront of the radiator.

Our temps were 200 - 210 consistently. I was hoping for under 200 but under 210 isnt terrible. Previously with the two smaller coolers we struggled to keep temps under 230 and had to consistently back off of it. That cooler dropped our temps atleast 30 to 40 degrees. So in short it works.

I did find out that we are exceeding our radiators cooling potential so i ordered a griffin radiator with a trans cooler. Im hoping to eliminate one or two of the smaller coolers and lower our coolant temps as well. They were consistently 210 to 220 degrees with temps raising to 230 if you had some traffic at speed.

That’s awesome, great to hear the bigger cooler kept your temps 30-40 lower. We’re not remote mounted like you, but we will have a fan pulling the whole time.

Interesting to hear your engine temps went up. What was the ambient during your race? The one thing we’ve had good luck with is keeping the engine cool. Even on a 100 degree day, we consistently ran 195 even in slower traffic.

Very happy to hear the trans cooler is going to give us a chance.

If you’re not doing so, 100% synthetic ATF should help top.

We have a 1996 radiator, which is probably undersized for the PI engine. Also have full synthetic Driven ATF. It was 90 ish degrees out but we are pushing the car a bit. It ate a set of front race brake pads in 15 hours. We were 120 + mph on the bank and straights. It didnt get much of a break honestly the infield is tight but had a lot of turns under power. We ran a 1:49 which isnt slow and was on pace with some faster cars.

Good to hear the tranny did well in hot air, under tough conditions. We don’t run our next race till December at Sonoma, which is typically fairly cool. I think the first real test of our cooler won’t be till April 2022. Regardless, happy to have the bigger cooler in.

The griffin radiator is the next piece to the trans cooling puzzle. It was less money than i thought for a 33" wide, 19" tall, 3" thick radiator with the correct hose routing and trans cooler in the endtank.

Water is much more effective at removing heat than air. Im really hoping the radiator and the one derale cooler will be enough. That way i can move the power steering cooler back infront of the radiator. We also picked up an oil cooler with the junkyard PI motor. Our oil temps were like 230 ish i think so the cooler should drop them a little bit.

I'm loving this thread!

Don't forget this approach: https://globaltransmissionparts.com/4r70...9xoC2kEQAvD_BwE

Is that a thermostat bypass? If so, thanks for the suggestion but both hherkes and I have removed the thermostat and are running the cooler full time.

If it does something different, please explain because I’m open to any suggestions.

Thanks,

Chuck

I believe that is what that is. Mine definetly doesnt have it in it anymore, it takes it forever to heat up unless you start beating on it.

The griffin radiator/transcooler will be in before our next race in a month. Im really hoping that the derale cooler and the radiator will be enough. That should be a good setup if you choose to go that route. The radiator was only $350. 33x19x3 so its not exactly small and allegedly will support 900+ hp

The bottom radiator hose is 1 3/4 so an adapter will be required, and the top vent line works off the cap, so you can just take the spring off the cap and essentially make it work just like the factory setup.
I will post pics when its done.