Transmission Temp Sensor drain plug?

You can purchase aftercoolers for manual transmissions .
They are very common on high horsepower transmissions .
Here is an example
https://www.driftmotion.com/Driftmotion-Manual-Transmission-Oil-Cooler-Kit-p/dm3561.htm

 

Good news. After some back and forth on the gauges with Summit who has been awesome so far...it turns out I can get a matching 120-300 on the gauges.

Just waiting on the a pillar trim, and new knobs for the crawl box and tcase shifters so I can justify draining and pulling the shifters to cut/weld/ refill. If I feel motivated i will run wires this weekend.

 

Hard part is done. Ran the sensor wires behind the dash down to the shifters, and will finish wiring through the floor when I drain and fill in a few weeks. Tapped into my exisiting wiring for the lockers to get illumination and ignition since they were already there.

Tested the senders with a mug of warm water and got a reading on the gauge so should be able to button this up pretty quickly when I get the rest of the stuff I need.




Stay tuned...

 

Quick update...

Got the trim piece in from Vivid racing which is really the Lotek trim at twice to price.

It's not really all that close to OEM in terms of finish and quality, but they are pretty much the only game in town for the pillar setup. Fit is meh... but I knew that going into it reading other reviews on this pillar mount from Lotek. I thought it would be worse, honestly.


Wiring up the gauges is red 12v ignition for gauge power, green 12v from an illumination circuit, negatives for the gauge and illumination, and yellow and white are signal for each sensor.




Wires went behind the dash (see previous post), and then through the floor on the passenger side of the trans tunnel.





Crawl box sensor:



Trans:


Interior:



Ran it for fifteen minutes tonight in the snow and freezing cold and just barely saw the trans needle move from below 120 to just at the bottom of the gauge so me thinks it's all working.

I will report back in a few days after driving through the moontans and getting things warmed up a bit better.

 

I don't want to sound like a Monday morning quarter back but I think you'd be fine putting that on the fill plug if you want it up and out of the way.
No, it wouldn't be in the fluid but when you're running, the fluid should be getting flung around some anyway. Besides, aluminum conducts heat really well. If your transmission is hot and you put your hand on the bottom or the top, I doubt you'd feel much of a difference.
Cool idea man!

 

Appreciate the support. It was easy enough to do...honestly easier than it is on the automatic IMHO since you're not splicing into cooling lines. Having to completely drain the trans is the only drawback, which to your point...I could probably get a good enough reading of the splashing oil off the fill, but the sensors are no more in the way on the bottom drain plug than it would be on the fill plug. Both are covered by skids so the only major threat to the sensors is deep water crossings. We'll see what happens with that.

The only thing I don't like about this is I loose my magnets on the drain plug. That would be my main motivation for moving the sensors to the fill plugs, but I just put close to $100 bucks worth of oil into the trans and crawlbox, so nothing is changing for a bit unless there are issues with the current approach.

 

Ran out to Moab last week and finally got to see legitimate temps while the trans was doing work on the highway going through the mountains.

The markings aren't labelled well so I am kinda guessing here, but I'm running about 200-220 on the trans after it warms up, cruising highway speeds. I did see peak temps of what I think was 240 degrees while hammering it up the hills. Higher than I'd like, but only for a few miles so not a major concern.

Crawlbox runs around 180-200. I saw close to 220 when the trans was at 240, but nothing to cause me further concern about excessive temps.

On the trail I never even hit close to 200 degrees on either the trans or the crawl box.

So now at least I know there's nothing catastrophic happening.

 

Out of curiosity what are you thinking for acceptable temps? I have no idea, but 240 F seems pretty hot. That said I've never given it any consideration for a manual...?

 

240 is definitely hot. From what I've read in a variety of conflicting posts and articles on the interwebs, oil starts to degrade above 220, at a rate of approximately twice as fast for every 20 degress over 220 (I've read as high as 250/260 for that threshold). I am sure the math doesn't actually work this way, but if 20-40 miles at 240 (versus 220) means I burned up 60-80 miles of good oil on that same trip...no big deal. 90+% of the time I am below the 220 mark which doesn't degrade the oil at the same rate. Change oil more often. At least now I know how hot it is running, and aside from long hauls through the moontans, its within acceptable ranges.