Transmission Cooler R&R

Posted by Gary On 2013/1/19 18:13:17

For awhile now I've been observing coolant seeping out of a small area at the top of my transmission cooler and decided it was time to repair it or replace it with a unit that I had removed from a '54 Clipper shortly after I purchased my car. When I removed my original cooler last year to make it easier to paint the engine I found that both necks were rusted to the point of being too far gone to repair so a friend of mine with a muffler shop cut the old ones off and replaced them with mild stainless necks that we cut from exhaust pipe. Further inspection showed that there were other weak areas in the cooler body but except for this latest leak it's still pretty solid. Anyway I didn't want to have the car down while I repaired the original cooler so I cleaned up the spare unit which surprisingly still had some pretty solid necks on it except for some deep rust pitting and two small pin holes. I thouroughly cleaned the the necks and wiped both the inside and outside with a skim coat of JB Weld then after shaping them up with a file I coated them inside and out with some left over POR15 Gas Tank Liner. Fast forward to a about an hour ago and I find out that Packard decreased the steel line size from 5/16" to 1/4" at some point which of course requires changing out the inverted flare fittings on the spare cooler unless I use 1/4" to 5/16" adaptors which I'd rather not do. My question is this, the inverted flare fittings are of course NPT on the end that screws into the cooler and they are going to be tight! What are the chances of removing the old fittings without breaking the boss loose on the cooler itself?

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