Originally Posted by thunder550

I am not a trans expert by any means, but FWIW I was told by THE Allison guru not to waste my money on a deep pan when I had my trans built.

Originally Posted by custm2500

People are missing the point. A large cooler with a fan will never let trans temps get past 150 set it up.

Originally Posted by Jordan927

Thermodynamics. The Law of thermal conduction. Its all about heat transfer.

Oil gets hot because of this. More oil to pump through the system means each oil molecule is in contact with each piece of metal for less time, This also means each oil molecule is in the pan for longer and therefore transfers more heat to the metal pan which is cooled by ambient air temp.

There is no insulation effect with hot oil on top of cool oil...the turbulence in the pan will mix them...they will equal out in temp quite quickly so the hotter oil will get cooler and the cooler oil will get hotter...the more cool oil there is the more heat can dissipate into it without much increase.

This also means that there is more oil to transfer the heat of the trans into, thereby increasing the oil's capacity to cool.

Finned pans mean more surface area in contact with the air and therefore more heat transfer to the air.

The other benefit of finned pans and large capacity pans are that they are usually constructed of Aluminum alloy, which has a greater ability to conduct heat than steel does. Hence the reason coolers are Aluminum construction, they used to use copper when Aluminum was expensive. Copper is even better at transferring heat....copper bottom pots and pans for example, and even if they don't have copper bottoms...they usually sandwich a piece of aluminum into the bottom of stainless pans.

Do you need a deep pan...absolutely not. You don't even need an external oil cooler....as long as your not cooking the trans during your daily dealings. Lost of transmissions are cooled by a section in the cold side of the rad..and that had been done for years.

I don't think there is really a wrong answer to how to cool....but saying that a deep pan does nothing is most definitely wrong.

For the record..deep pans are 50-200 bucks...with the standard being 150 (200 for a 4L80). I have no idea where this $300 number got pulled from as the standard... maybe a TCI or Mag Hy-Tec...but those look cool too...so that has a lot to do with it.

That cool looking Derale pan with the pipes through it, previously posted, is only 150 bucks...but its made of steel. Also, it says on its site that this pan can cool fluid by 20-50*, and adds 4.5 quarts of fluid. That's as much as a standard fluid cooler say 7"x15" with 6 cooling rows, they claim 20-30* cooling.

Fan coolers claim up to 70-95* on average. A cheap one is 150 Bucks and go to about 500 bucks, depending on size and name brand

You can add a pan for 150, and get up to 50* more cooling, or change out your old cooler and increase cooling by up to 65*...(95*- 30*) for the same 150 bucks.