Adding a tow package

Important to note, most factory references to "transmission cooler" are the 2 trans lines that enter & exit the radiator. I wouldn't tow anything large or regular without installing aftermarket trans cooler like a Hayden or simliar...

 

On most vehicles with automatic transmissions there is a portion of the radiator that has connections for the transmission fluid to run through some of the coils. When a transmission cooler is listed as separate line item on the build sheet or window sticker it typically refers to a separate radiator coil device that is external to the engines radiator. Is this not the case in the Tacoma tow package?

 

It is as I understand it - it should look like this I think:


That little extra radiator is as far as I know the surefire tell of the tow package.
So there is the radiator, the A/C condenser in front of it, and the tranny radiator in front of the condenser.

 

thanks, that photo is what I am used to seeing on vehicles with tow packages.

 

Every part on the factory tow package can be bought aftermarket. Those aftermarket parts can be better. Battery, alt, oil and trans cooler.

 

That is correct.

In fact, I can't think of any automatic trans from the 60s on that doesn't get cooled that way. There may be some, I've just not seen one I recall.

Tow packages typically have an air/air cooler as the additional unit, as @Sidney Vicious (the ex 'rassler? or the scrawny punk rocker?) has shown above.

 

I towed for 240k miles with my 4cyl Gen 1 that didn't have the tow package. I just added the hitch and wiring. I was never hauling anything too heavy but tens of thousands of miles a year. Trans was fine when I sold it.

 

A million years ago my dad towed a homebrew camper trailer with some Chevy station wagon - with my mother and seven kids and all of the junk that such a crew would require - on a trip from New Orleans to DC - hitting the Smokie Mountains along the way . . . . needless to say the automatic transmission was shot by the time we returned home - as I recall it stopped shifting somewhere around Stone Mountain, Georgia. Good times for the kids once we let my dad's cursing roll off our backs . . .

 

Is your Dad?

 

Not quite but he and a lot of other dads were Chevy's inspiration no doubt!