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Trans Cooler = FS Radiator?



Finally yanked the 345 from the racer carcass out front last night...
discovered a few fun points.  First, I have a sidewalk, and then a
grass/gravel driveway to the garage.  The Scout is still lying in the
grass/gravel in front of the garage, but the hoist had to sit half on the
sidewalk.. 

Lifted the motor up... and then, since the hoist legs were lying on the
concrete lip of the sidewalk, I opted to hitch the Scout to the hoist to
drag the motor forward... drug it forward a bit to clear the 727...

First problem - the trans cooler lines had been coupled together... but up
near the front of the motor, and still running through (what appears to be )
a stock cooler line "clip"... so I fixed that (yes, the trans in this racer
had no cooler), and drug the motor further forward.

Observation #2 - no matter how much power you smoothly apply, you probably
can't lift the square wheel "guards" of the engine hoist over the square
edge of the sidewalk, when you have a 750lbs motor dangling from the hoist.

Even in 4-low, with the front hubs locked... burnt clutch smells bad, but it
hooked up enough to have all for 33x12.50s spinning on more than one
occasion (yes, I backed off then!).. dry pavement, locked up... yes, the
Scout walked sideways during these pulls.

Finally put the motor back down and slowly drug the hoist onto pavement
using a lever n' such... then used the Scout to push the hoist back into the
grass along the side of the garage far enough to drop the 345 on a pallet...
and yep, used the Scout to pull the hoist out from under the pallet, too. :-)

Tom <-- smarter in his old age... or lazier

Anyhow... the question at hand.

I was also grabbing more things from the '83 Pontiac 2000 I'm stripping...
and I was looking for "what could I use from this"...  I had just removed a
3-row Scout II radiator from my other would-be racer carcass (hopefully to
be tested and cleaned up and installed to replace the leaking 2 row in the
'77)... so I was eyeballing that dinky 4cyl radiator in the Pontiac...
"Nah.. can't use that for the Scout"...

Then the motor pull and I found (hadn't thought of it before) no trans cooler...

Would a small "full-size" radiator work suitably for an automatic
transmission cooler?  I think I've seen aftermarket trans coolers bigger
than the main radiator in this car..

Anything fundamentally wrong with this theory?  I'm thinking... I could just
mount this mini-radiator in the bed of the racer with an electric fan... if
I got fancy enough, I'd put a thermostatic control on it tied into a trans
temp gauge.. but then again, it's a racer.. and it didn't have a cooler *at
all* the last dozen times it was raced...

This would have the added benefit of not getting clogged in the mud... 

I can spend $40 on a trans cooler (like the one I'm using to cool my power
steering unit)... or I can remove the functional radiator from this Pontiac
and find a use for it.  

Racer = left over junk parts I can't use elsewhere.

:-)

Next up... yank the 727 for an overhaul... then cut the 'cage out

-Tom Mandera, Helena MT
http://www.tmcom.com/~tsm1/scout
'77 Scout II - daily driver
'77/78 Scout IIs - someday, they'll race




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