Hey guys, I'm in the process of mounting an FMIC and the ps cooler is very much in the way. I know a lot of people just loop it and forget about it, but I have a new idea.

I recently put a new (used) rad in my car. It must have been from an automatic, because it has tranny cooler fittings. Would it be do-able to route the ps cooler hoses into those fittings, or would it be too hot for the ps?

Seems like a good idea on paper, but maybe someone else has tried it (with good or bad results) and I'd love to hear about it before killing a perfectly good ps rack

Thanks in advance guys!

I don't think PS fluid gets as hot as engine coolant.
It might make your engine run better!

I also don't see how it could hurt? I mean, if the power steering still works with the line looped, surely it would be BETTER with the fluid cooled through the rad. I can't see how it could possibly be too hot..and I doubt very much if the rad cares whether it is cooling p/s fluid or transmission fluid...

Maybe I just don't know enough about heat exchangers, but I'm assuming that if the coolant at the bottom of the rad is a fair bit hotter than the P/S fluid, it would actually increase the P/S fluid temperature and do more harm than good.

I have a tough time buying that argument, because then the same would apply to the tranny fluid on the automatic car, no?

Running through the rad will probably raise you power steering fluid temperature from where it would be during daily driving. However, during track or autoslaloms, the rad would be bringing down the fluid temperature some. I don't think anybody has any real data to support how much cooling the fluid needs and if the rad temperature of 100C will be able to cool the PS fluid of 130C (just guessing numbers here). I would stick to external air @ 30C for the cooling. Running it through the rad would be the same as the crappy oil filter "cooler" for the engine oil.
Why not leave the cooler line between the FMIC and the rad on the cross member? That's where mine is.

I would also put in some ATF from Redline, Amsoil, etc. rather than any old dexron stuff. I find the regular generic brand stuff boils when doing track/autoslalom events.

I'm also assuming that tranny fluid is a fair bit hotter than P/S fluid

//edit
To add to Tashko - from my "light" research on this topic, I have a temperature of approx. 55C on the surface of an SS fitting for a PS cooler inlet. The cooler (air/oil trans cooler) dropped the surface temp by about 10 degrees at the outlet.

My thinking is that dropping the air/oil cooler in a bucket of boiling water would only serve increase the P/S fluid temp.

That's excellent info guys. I guess I could just put it behind the radiator support bracket! I don't do any auto x or anything that requires a lot of help from the ps pump(no dry steering, etc) so I may just loop it as well.

Happy to hear some excellent tech discussion on this!

I'm in the process of installing my new fmic as well and was wondering how many people have their p.s. coolers looped? One problem I can think of using an auto trans rad is that the fittings are way smaller and that'd probably be bad for the p.s. cooling loop. Most I drive my car is about 15 mins to work, or the odd time to the drag strip 1.5 hours, so I'm pretty sure I wouldn't boil my p.s. oil.