My torque converter cooler failed while I was on vacation. I didn't discover it until my tranny started slipping as we were pulling back into town. My tranny and cooling swapped spit bigtime. This has been the biggest mess i have ever had to clean up. For those out there who will have to deal with this problem, this is what I did,

Replace or by-pass the cooler, which is basically a small heat exchanger bolted the drivers side of the block near the transmission. I by-passed mine.

I flussed the cooling system with about 50 gallons of water with a mix of dish soap to remove the tranny fluid sludge. This includes dumping the overflo resevior.

Next we removed the trans cooler return line and ran 15 gallons of dex-merc through it to clean it out. Then changed the filter and ran another 10 quarts of type 4 through it to flush the dex. The truck is running fine now.

In the end - I had a 55 gallon drum of contaminated water /coolant and tranny fluid that I dropped off at the local fuel/hazmat dump. What a mess, but I saved about $2-3000 dollars over a shop fixing it. I hope this helps someone.

 

I hope you pulled the check valve out of the line under the driver's battery and pulled the thermostat out of the front cooler and back flushed it seperately. If not you probably still have glop in the cooler and lines which will get washed into the trans lube system eventually.

Cleaning the systems up after a failure like that is definitely a pain.

 

I over simplified the process, but yes, I pretty much pulled everthing apart. After 2 days, there was still a small film floating on top in the resovior. I suctioned that off and have driven a couple hundred miles. Everything looks good now.