2002 Ford Super Duty F-250 - The Perfect Upgrade
| 2002 Ford Super Duty F250 front View
After years of abuse, the 4R100 automatic transmission behind our 7.3L melted down in our '02 Super Duty F-250 that rides on 46-inch tires. Sometime during the past two years, a valve designed to warm the transmission during cold weather by bypassing the transmission cooler became stuck. This resulted in a gearbox that refused to send fluid to the radiator for cooling, even when the truck was pulling a heavy trailer loaded with another 2-ton 4x4.
You can probably guess what happened next-the transmission failed one day during the commute to work. First it lost Overdrive, then it began acting skittish before it eventually went into limp-home mode, which kept speeds under 30 mph. Driving that slowly on the freeway is not the best way to make friends in Los Angeles, so we contacted Brian Thompson of Brian's Truck Shop in Lead Hill, Arkansas, and ordered one of his custom-built 4R100 transmissions along with an auxiliary fluid cooler (PN 5C32-7A095-CB) designed for 6.0L Power Stroke trucks. The transmission cooler fits the stock 7.3L location, but as you can see in the comparison photos (above), it more than doubles the stock surface area for cooling transmission fluid.
When our new-and-improved parts arrived, we piled them into the F-250 and made a slow trek down to South Bay Truck & 4x4 in Hawthorne, California. Our battered F-250 is no stranger to the crew at this performance shop because they installed the automatic that became toast after a factory part failed on the highway. Follow along as the tough BTS 4R100 is installed, then learn how to upgrade your transmission cooling system by more than 100 percent in just a few steps.
