What Are All the Other Coolers Beside My Cars Radiator

All right, let's check this out. Whoa, how many coolers does this thing need?

Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today, I want to talk to you about coolers underneath your hood. There might be several. We're going to start with the radiator, and we'll go from there. Now, to help you out to figure out which cooler actually goes to what, what I would recommend is to go directly to the cooler and follow the lines and see where they go to. If it seems as though the cooler or the radiator hoses go to the engine, obviously, that's going to be the radiator. If you have a couple of lines that come out of it and it goes down to the transmission, okay, transmission. Power steering, same. Just kind of go by that, and that'll help you out down the line. Okay. So, like I said, the first thing we're going to start with is the radiator, and that's going to be one of the largest aspects of your cooling system on your vehicle. Overall, what the radiator is supposed to do is, of course, cool down. The coolant is going to be flowing through this, which will in turn cool down the engine as the coolant flows through the water pump and the cooling system of the engine. If your radiator's in poor condition and/or these fins in the front right here are either clogged with debris or maybe even just kind of peened over so there's no airflow getting through the radiator, you're going to have an overheat condition. The radiator is super important to be clean and free of all obstructions because anything even like this could, of course, cause a little bit of restriction, which, of course, is going to make the radiator heat up and it's not gonna be able to cool as it should. Is one little bumblebee gonna slow you down or overheat your vehicle? Probably not. But if you get enough of it in there or enough stuff in between these fins, you're gonna see an issue.

Another easy way to tell which one of your coolers is going to be the radiator aside from the length of it or the size of it is, of course, overall, on most vehicles, you're going to have a radiator cap on top. It's going to look like this, and if it's hot, you definitely don't want to open it. Another part that's going to be super important for your cooling system is located on the backside of your radiator in between the radiator and the engine itself. In between the two, there should be a fan of some sort. Generally speaking, it'll either be electrically controlled by the engine's PCM or electric control module, or you're going to have one that's actually physically mounted to your water pump. Either way, your fan's job is meant to draw air through the cooling system or through your cooling fins on the radiator to cool down the coolant that's going to be flowing through it. If your fan isn't working the way that it should, you might have an overheat condition, and you might tend to consider it to be a radiator problem. Keep your mind on those fans in the back. They need to function properly as well. Just a quick note about the reasoning for the position of the radiator being in the back of all the rest of your coolers is the fact that it's going to need to control the most amount of heat. The reason why it controls the most amount of heat is because it's for your engine cooling system. And, of course, the engine is going to run hottest out of all your vehicle's driveline system. And, of course, with the heat that's going to be coming from it, if you were to put it in front of all the rest of your coolers, it's going to be drawing the air through the radiator first, getting super hot, and then it's going to try to go through the coolers with hot air, and, of course, it's not gonna be able to cool down everything else.

Something that's little bit harder to see, but if you were to come along the backside of the radiator and you look along the sides, you might see a couple of ports. If you happen to notice that you have them on only one side of the radiator, more than likely it's for a transmission cooler of some sort. So, essentially, you might see lines that come out of this, and they'll either run directly to a transmission or one of the lines might run to an external transmission cooler, and then, of course, lead to the transmission, in which case, you have an internal cooler and, of course, external cooler. Other times you might not even see any ports on the radiator, and, of course, that just means that you should have an external cooler only, or, of course, you're driving a manual transmission, in which case, you wouldn't have any ports. Something else you might happen to notice is on the other side of the radiator, a couple other ports. They might generally be a little bit larger, and those are actually for an oil cooler. Essentially, what would happen with that is you'd have lines that go from the radiator out and down to the oil filter housing. And, of course, that's going to be a way to cool down the oil overall. Now, the next thing that you're probably going to see in front of your radiator would be the AC condenser, and the reason for that is because it's going to be the second largest aspect overall. Sometimes what you might happen to notice is they have the AC condenser off to the side, which is a little less common. Generally, it will be in front of the radiator though.

Now, something to mention about the AC system before we go too far, we want to be super safe about this. It's under extreme pressure, and it's high-pressure gas inside there. You definitely don't want to open anything up. You don't want to start messing around with things unless you know what you're doing. Aside from that, something to think about is it does offer environmental concerns as well, because if you were to release the gas that's inside the AC system, well, it's going to go up into the atmosphere and, of course, could be very bad overall. The condenser is basically the same thing as a radiator, and essentially it serves the same purpose of one. So, overall, essentially, what your condenser is going to do is it's going to cool down your AC's refrigerant that's inside the system. Essentially, what happens is your AC system transfers your refrigerant from liquid to gas and then gas and back again by raising and lowering the temperature of the refrigerant through the system. So, essentially, we cool it down here, and, of course, it raises by the heat of the actual compressor itself. Generally, if your vehicle has electric fans, you're going to hear them turn on when the AC is running. That's to help draw the air through the condenser, which, of course, is going to cool down that gas and then help return it back to the liquid form again. If your refrigerator is blocked or restricted or has too much or little pressure, you won't get cold AC, and, of course, you can do damage to your compressor, but that's kind of a video of its own.

If you're trying to be sure of which unit is actually your AC condenser, like I said, it's gonna be the one probably closest to your radiator or at least secondary in size, one size smaller. Something else that you'd probably see is a nice aluminum line coming directly out of that. You're gonna see one along the top and generally along the bottom somewhere. If you were to follow it along, you're going to be able to find your service ports. Right underneath these caps, there's going to be a little valve. You don't want to go ahead and touch that unless, of course, you have the proper machine or apparatus to be able to service your AC system. Just something for you to think about so you don't get too worried. If you happen to see water drips on any of your AC lines, it's not something to be worried about, that's condensation. It's bound to happen, and it's actually part of what needs to happen for the AC system to work properly. So, now, at this point, your coolers are going to start getting much smaller. They might be bigger or smaller than this, but it's just a representation of what's going on. The next size down will generally be your transmission cooler. If you have an automatic transmission, you're gonna want to have an automatic transmission cooler, whether it's a separate one like this or an external cooler or one that's integrated with the radiator. Your transmission is obviously a very important part of your driveline system. It's also going to get very hot, so it needs to have a cooler. On some vehicles, you might notice that you have two transmission coolers. You'll have transmission lines that go into the radiator, and then one of those lines coming out of the radiator will actually go to an external cooler as well. A reason why they tend to do that is generally for a couple of different reasons. Maybe you've got a big old pickup truck that has a high tow capacity. Obviously, the transmission is expected to do a lot of work in that case. If it's doing a lot of work, it's going to generate a lot of heat, so you're going to want to make sure you're able to cool it down sufficiently.

Other than that, you might happen to find it on performance vehicles, maybe something that you see around a racetrack or even a hot rod car that you see just driving around on a nice Sunday. Aside from that, generally, you're going to have one of the two. You'll either have an external cooler or an internal cooler, which is actually integrated with the radiator. So, now, we're gonna move along to the power steering cooler. Overall, that's probably going to be one of the smaller coolers that you have on your vehicle. The power steering pump, of course, does generate heat because it's going to be spinning at a lot of RPMs or revolutions per minute. Obviously, it depends on how fast your vehicle is driving or your motor spinning/running. If you're at high RPMs, the belt's going to be spinning fast, it's going to be turning that pump fast. So, of course, it's going to generate more heat. The more heat you have inside the system, the less lubricity you might have overall. So, of course, if you generate too much heat and you have less lubricity, you're going to have an issue. You need a way to dissipate that heat. There's a couple of different ways that people go about doing this or manufacturers go about doing it. They can put in an external reservoir that's away from the pump, and that's going to kind of give you a little bit more space or a little bit more lines to hold more fluid. The reason for that is because the more fluid you have, the more heat dissipation you're going to have.

Also, what people tend to do is to add a little cooler, something like this that you might see right along the bottom here. Like I said, it's the smaller of the coolers because the power steering pump is just a little itty-bitty pump overall. If your power steering fluid overheats, it's going to eventually lose its lubricity. Essentially, when that happens, your fluid is going to become discolored. It might even start to smell a little bit funny, almost like the transmission fluid like I was saying. Another difference, though, would be you might actually start getting a whine noise coming from the power steering pump, which, of course, means it's hurting and it needs a little bit of help, whether it's a fluid change/flush or even a replacement of the pump. Okay. So, we covered the majority of the coolers that most vehicles have. There's one other that some vehicles have, but not so many, and that would be an oil cooler. The oil cooler, of course, is supposed to cool the engine's oil. The reason for that is because, of course, your engine is going to run hot, and the hotter the engine runs, the less lubricity you're going to have and the faster that your engine oil is gonna break down overall. So, by having an external cooler on there, it's going to help keep everything a little cooler, which, of course, is needed. The radiator is still going to be doing its job, but this is like a little bit extra help. Like I said, it's only on some vehicles. You're not gonna see it in every vehicle. So, if you're like, "My car just doesn't have an oil cooler, Len. You said it does." I'm not telling you it does. I'm telling you it might. And just keep in mind, sometimes the oil cooler is actually integrated with the radiator kind of like that transmission cooler.

So, that's pretty much everything I have for you on coolers underneath your hood, well, in exception of a couple things. There's a couple of other things that I like to mention. One would be involving maintenance. Overall, maintaining something like this could be something as simple as, of course, replacing the fluid that's inside of it. Whether it's your power steering fluid, your engine coolant, the oil, transmission fluid, whatever the case may be, make sure you're caught up to date on the service interval. Something else that I'd like to mention is the external aspect of it. If you were to look, you can see all these nice cooling fins right here. If you happen to notice that any of them are peened over or bent over, that could be an issue. It's going to restrict airflow. If you have any debris that's inside or around any of these fans, it's gonna, of course, restrict airflow once again. It's always a great idea to go ahead and try to clean these things out. I like to use a nice gentle garden hose. I'll come right up to it approximately from this far away, we'll call it maybe 6 inches, and just give it a nice spray. We want to go back and forth in between all of these fins. Some people will choose to use compressed air. That could be fine, but it could actually damage the fins. Of course, with enough compressed air, it could peen them over, which would cause an incident. And, of course, you could be forcing the debris from this one into the next one, and then it's just getting caught there as well. So, just go ahead and stick with a nice light mist of water and just try to spray it out as much as possible. What you're going to notice on the ground is probably a big old mud puddle overall.

And, of course, if you did happen to notice that there's damage to the fins on your cooling system, that's something that you're going to have to service/replace. There really isn't too much you can do with those fins. Sometimes you can use a little pick and try to straighten them out, but overall, it might be a little bit more cost-effective and more efficient to just go ahead and replace the unit. While I'm talking about that though, I don't want you to start messing around with the AC condenser. That's this right over here, which is also the second largest part, like I said before, in comparison to the radiator. The reason for that is because your AC condenser is going to have compressed gas inside of it. So, if you go ahead and try to disconnect a line because you're trying to service it or replace it, where's that gas going to go? Up and out, and it could potentially be very dangerous for you and especially dangerous for the environment.

Okay, friends, we tried to make you a nice, easy video about some of the coolers that you're going to find under the hood of your vehicle. It can be a little bit confusing, but essentially, if you just go to the part that you're looking at and you follow the lines to see where they go to, essentially, you should be able to figure out whether they go to the engine, the transmission, the power steering, or anything else the like. With that said, hopefully, you liked the video. And if you did, please feel free to smash on the like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, why don't you go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell? That way there, you could be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.

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