Page 4 - F-Series Super Duty

Sometimes there are products we can't wait to get on the market. The sense of urgency follows positive feedback after a release or hinting at a recently started project. There's pride in giving people what they want, what they need. When our 2003-2007 6.0L Powerstroke Transmission Cooler Kit was released, the question that kept coming was if it would fit the 7.3L. What followed was a "no, sorry." That didn't sit well with us. The efforts grew exponentially as more questions surfaced about fitment, and as the number of requests to make a direct fit kit increased.

In retrospect, it would have been best to provide all you 7.3L owners with upgraded cooling when the transmission cooler first launched. The reason why our 6.0L kit wasn't on option then was due to the hose routing. The lines are different. The 6.0L already has hoses that can adapt to our cooler without the necessity of lines from us. The inlets and outlets are in different spots here, so we needed to carefully design hoses that

Last time, we took a look at the unique design of the Ford 6.7 secondary Super Duty radiator and its accompanying thermostats. Our last post was only about two weeks ago, but I come bearing some good news - plus, great things come in twos.

Why does my primary rad need a companion?

As a recap, this heat exchanger, found in 2011+ Ford Super Duty trucks, works as an integral part of a mostly independent secondary cooling system that manages many of the truck's auxiliary cooling needs, including those of the liquid-to-liquid charge air cooler. Cooling these engine components more efficiently should not only prolong their useful lives, but also may make for some nice performance benefits if coupled with a tune - who doesn't love colder charge air?

The secondary system allows the primary radiator to more exclusively and efficiently cool the torquey Power Stroke motors found

Whether we're talking about turbochargers on an F-150 EcoBoost, V8 engines in an offshore powerboat, drummers in the Allman Brothers Band, or pieces of Carvel™ Ice Cream Cake for dessert on my birthday, sometimes two is a better option than one. This was very much the school of thought that Ford's engineers adopted when designing the cooling system on the 2011+ F-Series Super Duty trucks, including the F-350, F-450, and F-550. These trucks feature two systems that work in parallel to handle all of the cooling needs in your truck, and both are equally important.

Our engineers at Mishimoto also see the value in the "two can be better than one" mindset. When we bought our Mustang GT, we didn't stop there - we bought a turbo model, too. Many of you may know that we have already released a

It's now time to install our prototype and put some data behind the efficiency differences we expect to see between our cooler and the factory heat exchanger. We did add a substantial amount of core surface area, so we anticipate that heat transfer will improve during a load test. Check out this shot of the Mishimoto 6.0L transmission cooler installed!

Mishimoto 6.0 Powerstroke transmission cooler installed

Testing Process

We have numerous tools at our disposal to test heat exchangers. For this one, we will be using our Dynapack™ dynamometer. With a transmission cooler test, we want to apply some load on the vehicle to ensure that stress is created within the drivetrain. We

Now that we have designed our 6.0L transmission cooler prototype in SolidWorks®, our team has begun work on constructing our first prototype. We will be using this prototype to verify fitment on our truck and perform heat-soak testing to determine any cooling benefits provided by the larger core size.

Mishimoto 6.0L Transmission Cooler Prototype

Check out a couple shots of our first prototype unit!

Mishimoto 6.0 Powerstroke transmission cooler

With a rough 3D model in place, we started constructing our 3D-printed prototypes to finalize our 6.0L degas bottle design and to refine any areas where adjustments are needed.

Due to the large size of this degas unit, we printed the bottle in multiple sections and then attached each portion together.

Below is a look at our first 3D print fitted into place on our 6.0L.

3D-printed 6.0 Powerstroke degas bottle

3D-Printed 6.0 Powerstroke degas bottle