ADDING A TRANS COOLER - ZJ

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DISCLAIMER: THESE INSTRUCTION ARE ONLY A MEANS OF DEMONSTRATING HOW I ADDED THESE ITEMS TO MY CAR.  I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON AUTOS SINCE I WAS 15. YOU MUST REALIZE PERFORMING ANY OF THIS WORK IN THE WRONG MANNER CAN SEVERELY DAMAGE A CAR OR PLACE YOU AND OTHERS IN HARM WAY!

First thing you need to do is purchase a 6 tube trans cooler,1994 Jeep trans cooler or more tubes if you tow. I picked mine up at PEP BOYS.   If you want to save a few dollars you can try JC Whitney auto parts, a mail order company.  You can follow the instructions on the box to add this IN ADDITION to your radiator cooler.  I by-passed my radiator, I cut my trans lines and purchased extra rubber hose to reach both cut off points. If you cut the metal tubes, you MUST be careful you clean the cuts of all metal filing before you add the connections.

The installation was not so easy as the "Chilton auto repair" instructions were a bit flawed.  You must take off the 4 bolts to the metal cover holding the radiator in place.  You must then take off the 3 screws on the front of the chrome grill and remove the grill to locate two more bolts holding on the top radiator part.  This transmission cooler was very thin.  It fit it in tiny space between the grill and those two metal U-shaped support arms.  I held the cooler in place by using the supplied foam pads and added extra foam strips (door foam) placed on those front U-bars.  The cooler will be pressed against this extra foam by the supplied plastic support tabs. 1994 Jeep trans cooler The plastic support tabs can't take a lot of tension, so be careful. I aligned and drilled holes into the black plastic just behind the chrome grill.  I placed the cooler where it should go.  Visualized a straight shot just under the first cooler tube and just above the last I drilled four holes through this black plastic support.  You MUST reattach the 2 bolts on the U-bars before you finally attach the cooler as the U-bars will be pressed backwards when their bolts are attached.   This created more space between the front black plastic support and the metal U-bars.  If you don't replace the U-bar bolts before you add the support tabs, you will damage the cooler or snap the plastic support tabs as the space increases.  So bolt the U-bars first then adjust the plastic tabs to hold the cooler.  Make sure the added foam on the U-bars touch the cooler.  I cut a small hole in the rubber shield on the right to have the two cooler hoses pass through.  I used plastic wire ties to hold the new cooler hoses out of the way of the fan and a bit of extra hose to connect the old hoses to each other to keep it clean in the radiator trans cooler area. You can install the trans cooler behind and at the bottom of the radiator as the instructions state but with this being the only cooling item, I decided to have constant air passing this cooler.