Water cooled oil coolers are used because they are extremely effective.
Especially for transmission oil cooling. Many vehicles use a tranny cooler
inside the radiator or some type of heat exchanger that uses the coolant.
What you should do is install some type of temperature monitoring before any
changes and then see what results you get with the "upgrade" Luckily the
Vanagon torque converter has its own cooling as a left over from the air
cooled days. For both engine and transmission coolers I like to get them up
front in front of the radiator.  Keep in mind that even idling in neutral
the tranny will make heat just from the hydraulic pump and internal spinning
and rubbing parts.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Phil Zimmerman
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 7:47 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Tranny oil cooler,(homemade kit?)

Marc,

What Larry said and .
The banjo fittings, 12 x 1.5 mm thread, can be found on various Golf, Jetta
and Rabbit fuel systems of the era.

The GW kit is a bust. Read up on frame-rail coolers. One manufacturer even
states: not intended for use on cars exposed to stop and go driving.
Grid-lock driving heats up a TQ significantly. Little flow of air over the
cooler under this situation.

Brent Weide's web site has fine how-to install a cooler.

Link: <http://www.weidefamily.net/vanagon/>

Chick-on Transaxle then Transaxle R/R. Nice photo essay on the install.

Pz
on a rock off the west coast.
-----------------
Larry wrote in part:

...(the hardest part) got the banjo fittings by scouring pick-and-pull junk
yards.  It's been a few years, but I believe the fittings came from PS pumps
on Mercedes or BMWs.
good luck,
Larry A.
----------------------
On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 6:59 PM, marc rose <mrose1028@gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone ever make there own "kit" for a tranny cooler?  I have a 90
> Carat and want to get the factory tranny cooler before it gets me.
> Don't really want to spend the money on the GW kit and was wondering
> if anyone has dupplicated the smallcar kit.  I would imagine you could
> put your own kit together cheaper by doing the leg work yourself.  I
> am a little bit of a tight wad and don't mine the extra leg work.