Good day all,

On my last trip thru the mountains my 2006 H2 (10,000 miles on new engine) started to heat up. It didn't "overheat" but warning light came on saying "engine coolant hot". I was wondering if I could add electric fan(s) in addition to the belt driven fan or if I should replace the belt drive with electric. Any insights are greatly appreciated.

 

Get a Tru Cool 40k transmission cooler. Use that to replace the stock tiny one in front of the radiator and totally bypass where the trans currently passes through the radiator. On mountains the transmission on these gets HOT. The stock trans cooler is barely adequate and on top of that it also goes through the radiator which transfers a lot of extra heat into the engine coolant. Its a very popular mod on GM trucks and many with H2's have also done it. There is a massive thread on performancetrucks forums on doing it as well a few smaller threads on here where a few have done it on their H2's.

That by itself will add life to your transmission and might very well take enough heat load off of the radiator to eliminate the coolant hot issue.

If you are moving at more than about 40mph electric fans might actually make things worse as the wind itself will provide more airflow than the electric fans and at those speeds if anything, they will just be blocking some of the natural airflow from the wind.

 

Thank you for the reply. Coincidentally, I was headed to SC when this happened. Is this an easy self install or do I need a mechanic? Any good ones around the Clemson area?
Thanks again.
Mark

 

It is not an off the shelf thing that is made specifically for the H2. You would need to fabricate some brackets to mount it. Tubing cutter (like used for copper) to cut the stock trans cooler lines, then ideally some 3/8" compression fittings plus 3/8" hose barbs, etc. It is not a terribly complicated project but not something I'd want to do while out of town somewhere in a auto part store parking lot.

 

The transmission cooler is a project or at least mine was. I didn’t have a radiator so I couldn’t finish until I got the new radiator installed. I would look at a MishiMoto aluminum radiator something like that also. H2Miami got a great deal on one and he’s seems very happy with the results. I’m happy with mine and it makes a huge difference and I still have the transmission cooler in the radiator. I have a little bit about the install on a thread MY 2007 H2 take a look and Citiboy has a really good right up on it and I pretty much did it like same way with just a few tweaks.

 

Looks like the heating problem is solved. Replaced radiator with all aluminum, 1.25" core radiator, added Tru Cool 40K transmission cooler and replaced DexCool with the green antifreeze/coolant. Coolant got s little hot on last trip (103 degrees ambient temp) but not enough to worry. Thanks for all of the advice.