How To: 4th Gen V6 Radiator Replacement/Tranny Cooler Install

Well, I forgot to take pics but I got the OEM tranny cooler mounted. Unfortunately, it is not plug and play. There are three mounting points on it and only one of them remotely line up with one on the car. The one with the rubber bushing that attaches to the center bar of the radiator support lines up perfectly. For the others I had to make brackets. There were two bolt holes nearby so all I had to do was cut straight brackets and put holes in them. I found an old socket rail and cut it down and drilled it. The cooler is now nice and secure and not touching anything it shouldn't. Now I'm going to exchange the fluid and replace the hoses at the radiator and plumb in the cooler. I won't be bypassing the radiator. I'll go tranny to rad, rad to cooler, cooler to tranny. Hopefully it'll help keep the tranny a little cooler when I'm in the mountains and whenever I tow something.

 

Thanks for the update, I was wondering if the V8 cooolers were plug & play to the V6. Do the stock V6 cooler lines connect to the cooler without any modifications? That would be the big concern for me since mounting brackets are easy to make. Try & get some pics when its all finished as I'm sure others would like to do this. An aux trans cooler will definitely help keep fluid temps under control when towing.

 

Hey Yoda, The lines on the V6 won't hook up directly, but only because they're too short. I bought 10 ft of 3/8 hose and I plan to change out my fluid and I'm gonna replace the hoses from where they connect near the bottom of the radiator and run all new hoses. It'll go into and out of the radiator and the through the cooler and back to the tranny. I'll do my best to get some pics tomorrow when I complete this.

 

I decided rather than continue to hijack this thread I made a how to on a new thread in case anyone wants to add a V8 cooler to their V6 Runner. You can view it here: https://www.4runners.com/threads/how-to-adding-oem-v8-tranny-cooler-to-v6.20107/