this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Every automatic transmission car sold since the 1970's and probably earlier has had a transmission cooler, right there alongside or in front of the radiator.
Also all of them have locking torque converters so there is no energy loss at constant speed. Also also, unless going upward at an incline. Most of the power requirements come from aerodynamic drag, not rolling friction of the trailer.
You can't lock the converter when accelerating because ~~that's not a constant speed~~ you'll stall the motor under the torque load, and to accelerate you need to overcome momentum. Neither drag nor rolling friction are anywhere close to high torque.
And I have no idea what the previous poster meant with a transmission cooler, I guess it's a different thing because a torque converter very much is not a transmission, if you want to compare it to anything then to a clutch. In any case I've got that explanation from an actual American actual car mechanic and random lemmings aren't going to change my mind especially while making no mechanical sense.
A torque converter is part of the whole transmission system even if it's a separate housing. When you buy a new transmission, it comes with a torque converter.
Torque converters also create the majority of heat in automatic transmissions and are why automatic transmissions get coolers in the first place. How many manuals have you seen with transmission coolers?
You're right, granted, it's probably just a bad name.
Then, though, are those cooling systems systems you find in small cars sufficient to cool the thing under sustained high torque loads? Like stop and go city traffic on flat terrain with 2.5t of fully-packed caravan behind it? How much space and weight does it take to beef them up to be able to deliver the same performance of a manual? Is it still sufficient to hook the thing up to the engine cooler, how much more radiator area do you need? Does that even fit a car? Is that why SUVs are designed to hide small kids in front of them? (ok I'll stop now).
Stop and go city traffic isn't all that sustained, because of the stop part.
None of my cars so far have had any issues towing ~2 tons, I'm not sure why 2.5 would be that much worse.
Of course, they've each had 400 newton-meters of torque out of their dinky little diesel engines.