Transmission cooler lines

Hey guys,

Just seeing if most run their transmission cooler lines in. Steal, copper or rubber hose or?

Cheers
Jase

Jayro said:

Hey guys,

Just seeing if most run their transmission cooler lines in. Steal, copper or rubber hose or?

Cheers
Jase

Click to expand...

Jayro said:

Hey guys,

Just seeing if most run their transmission cooler lines in. Steal, copper or rubber hose or?

Cheers
Jase

Click to expand...

Steel is my preference.

Jayro said:

Hey guys,

Just seeing if most run their transmission cooler lines in. Steal, copper or rubber hose or?

Cheers
Jase

Click to expand...

Mine were runner and always leaked

Steel here, also.

I have steel w/rubber hose adapters. Mine originally came with an FMX, so I ordered new hard cooling lines. Then I lucked into an AOD, which had part of its cooling lines still attached, so I trimmed the FMX lines to meet up with the AOD 'leftovers,' bubble flared the ends, and joined them with fuel injection hose.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize fuel injection hose would getting eaten by ATF, so 8 years after I did this, I have a giant puddle of ATF on my garage floor and now need to replaced the adapter hoses I made. Make sure to use hoses that are ATF-friendly.

Always try to use steel or stainless steel lines. My experience is that rubber will eventually leak, and copper will have more long term issues that steel or stainless steel.

I believe that the only tubing I will be using from now on is cupronickel (copper-Nickel alloy). It has good strength and its corrosion resistance is as good as stainless steel, but it is much easier to work with, flaring, making bends and sealing, than stainless steel. Even though the primary metal is copper the nickel in it makes it silver colored.
https://www.amazon.com/Copper-Nicke...&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584345016045682&th=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupronickel

I'm not sure if mine are stainless or just standard steel lines (pretty sure they're just standard), but I bought them along with a set of hard brake and fuel lines from Inline Tube, and it was Hell getting them all seated. I've heard lots of good stuff about the cupronickel.

Don C said:

I believe that the only tubing I will be using from now on is cupronickel (copper-Nickel alloy). It has good strength and its corrosion resistance is as good as stainless steel, but it is much easier to work with, flaring, making bends and sealing, than stainless steel. Even though the primary metal is copper the nickel in it makes it silver colored.
https://www.amazon.com/Copper-Nicke...&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584345016045682&th=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupronickel

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Interesting product however, I live way inland so I'm not worried about saltwater effects and the lines we made up for the C4 when I pulled the FMX were formed on the brake line tooling and fit, flow and don't leak as designed, but hey, whatever floats the boat!

When doing transmission cooler lines, I have learned the hard way, that the best thing to do is buy the premade lines sold by Classic Tube, or Inline Tube or one of those guys, even though they can sometimes be a pain to install. I no longer even attempt to make my own, or even less, try to fix broken ones, as they always end up leaking.

DAverkamp said:

Interesting product however, I live way inland so I'm not worried about saltwater effects and the lines we made up for the C4 when I pulled the FMX were formed on the brake line tooling and fit, flow and don't leak as designed, but hey, whatever floats the boat!

Click to expand...

Just because you don't live near the coast and subject to salt water doesn't mean you are immune from steel lines rusting out. I lived in Nevada, a long way from salt water and one of the driest states in the nation, most of my life and had steel brake lines rust out (as from the inside out). I have known many others also that rusted out, some causing accidents.

The references to marine use is to show the durability, not the only place they can and should be used. You live in Wisconsin where salt is commonly used on roads in the winter, so are likely to encounter salt water occasionally.

I bought the pieces from O’Reilly‘s and a bender and a flaring tool and just made my own. It wasn’t too bad at all and it’s nice to route them where you would like. Unfortunately I was in a hurry and still need to reroute one of them and it was a bear getting it on the C6 - my hand was having a hard time reaching up in there but I finally got it. Good luck!

Don C said:

Just because you don't live near the coast and subject to salt water doesn't mean you are immune from steel lines rusting out. I lived in Nevada, a long way from salt water and one of the driest states in the nation, most of my life and had steel brake lines rust out (as from the inside out). I have known many others also that rusted out, some causing accidents.

The references to marine use is to show the durability, not the only place they can and should be used. You live in Wisconsin where salt is commonly used on roads in the winter, so are likely to encounter salt water occasionally.

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Easy now, I was only referring to the "purpose" of the special lines being engineered for salt water and durability, etc. I was making a funny...
IMO there is nothing complex about fabbing lines for brakes or trans lines coolers, etc. We mock up our routes with mechanics wire as a template and lay it on the bench and do it to it.

I don't drive in the salt and I do perform extensive preventative maintenance to ID issues.
I hope we are cool?

Yes, we're good, I guess sense of humor diminishes with age. Must be the second thing to go

When I installed a larger cross-flow aluminum radiator in our 73 Mustang Convertible, with a 302 2v engine and C4 tranny, the radiator required us to run tranny cooling oil lines a few inches wider than the original radiator did. I had some options, run new steel lines made to accommodate the wider radiator, resection the steel lines and insert new, additional steel lines connected with compression fittings, or resection the steel lines and insert a length of high pressure transmission cooler line to make up the needed difference in length. After some hemming back and forth I decided to use high pressure transmission cooler line (reinforced rubber designed to handle ATF and the pressures I would be incurring. After I used a tubing cutter to cut the lines I put a slight flare at the 4 line ends, then installed the needed rubber hose lengths with worm drive clamps. It has been about 3 years since I did that resectioning, and the lines are doing just fine.

I would advise against using fuel line even Fuel Injection strength fuel line. In the event the transmission cooler rubber lines to fail I will opt to resection the affected areas using a small length of copper-nickel line, then double flare all ends of the connections and used flare-nut connectors to join the lines together. In fact, I might do that this current Car Season just to have something to tinker with.

When we transplanted an AOD tranny into our 73 Mach 1, replacing its original C4 tranny, we opted to run new copper-nickel metal lines, hand bent (using a tubing bender of course) to fit as needed. I video recorded pretty much all of the AOD transplant project, to include the cooling line fabrication where the cooling lines are now run into an external oil cooler as opposed to running them into the radiator's inner oil cooling chamber. The fabrication of the cooling lines begins just after 07:30, and ends at about 15:34 in the YouTube video link below.

Another section of the video link provided below, from 16:50 through 19:09, shows the external transmission oil cooler being installed, and the rubber high pressure hose being routed and installed.