Transmission cooler as a power steering cooler?
- Thread starter Abendage
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The general opinion of experts is PS fluid runs around 120 +-. The engine coolant 195++. Most of the coolers I see are tube and fin with 2 passes like a old school trans cooler. I think your better off just getting a PS cooler if you have problems or like a auto box trans, fluid changes with good fluids. Get a mighty vac or other suck it out device and freshen it up every oil change or so. Just my $.02 worth.
Do you want to heat the power steering fluid to the same temperature as the engine coolant?
Sure, if that temp is an optimum temp for the steering to perform at. I've seen some articles say that you should keep it below 220 and some say keep it below 180. If 220 is the right answer then keeping it at coolant temp sounds great, if 180 is the answer it'd be right on the edge. My coolant temp varies from 193 to 206 at the cylinder head, the temp will be lower at the bottom of the radiator where the trans cooler is. If the fluid and steering perform and survive at 190ish then I see no problem heating the fluid to that temp, as long as the cooler can keep it at that temp.
Fwiw, I have full PSC steering with hydro assist. In all the variations to assemble a system like this, the cooler is never the transmission cooler on the engine radiator, in part because it does not offer sufficient cooling, in part because the minimum temperature from the transmission temperature is the engine coolant temperature.
This right here is the question. How have you, or anyone, arrived at this conclusion? Has it been determined that 190 to 210 isn't a good operating temperature range for steering components?
My answer considered stock systems, the PSC is a different animal. For what its worth a well known ford trans engineer has stated as fact a trans cooler will remove heat from a hot trans, but will not add to warm up trans fluids. He provided the test docs to back this up, dont ask how as physics are not my bag. Assuming this is correct this would apply to steering fluid as well. Again, an engine at 195++ is not what you wanna see for steering fluid.
Makes sense to me, while they are in the same radiator the surface area of the cooling fins to air is much greater than they are to liquid and they are in separate cores. So the heat transfer from the fluid would have to be greater than the cooling properties of the air across the fins in order to transfer heat from one to the other. Now it could for sure warm up the air flowing through the radiator which would reduce the cooling of whichever core is in the rear.
I didn't know about Ford radiators, but moving any fluid through the transmission cooler buried inside the TJ engine radiator will raise the floor temperatures of that fluid towards that of the engine coolant passing through the radiator at a greater rate than the fluid passing through the trans cooler will remove heat from the engine coolant. Ultimately, the temperature equalibrium between both fluids is going to be largely determined by the larger thermal mass that is also being heated by the engine. I understand enough about physics to understand the exchanging of heat.
The little transmission cooler buried inside my Mopar radiator is bathed in engine coolant.
Looking more closely at my radiator I see that, it’s just in the tank, it doesn’t have a separate core that is air cooled. Some John Deere equipment had oil coolers in the same radiator as the coolant but it was a separate exposed to air core. These aren’t the same.
The coolant in the lower tank shouldn't be equal to engine coolant temp, should it, else the radiator is not doing its job...?
Do we care if we are more interested in how to add effective cooling to the power steering system?
A better use for an unused transmission cooler inside the engine radiator might be to plumb a food warming box into the passenger compartment.
I agree, and why I asked the question to begin with but if PSC wants 120-160 I don’t think that’s achievable with the trans cooler and that’s the components I’m ultimately going to run.
Your are confused. FIAT is fix it again tony not Ford.
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