Background: 2013 T&C Limited, purchased with 135k miles, replaced spark plugs, basic maintenance and proceeded to drive it 25k miles in one year. At around 150k I bought the replacement cooler as i had planned to replace it at some point soon but that never happened up until yesterday when I checked under the hood and noticed the transmission being wet with oil. Dip stick was 1/2 up the "SAFE" zone.
Decided it was time, gathered a few tools and got working, about 20min later I had the old cooler in my hand looking at what happened.
This is now my third oil cooler replacement and every failure is always rubber o rings that flatten and harden against the aluminum. Its always the oil port on the right side, closest to the sensors on the cooler body. Every time!
Have not seen cracked or bad housing yet. I suspect this repair can be done within ~15$ of OEM or Mahle gaskets.
The cracked housings I think were due to some oil shops attempting to actually torque the cap onto the filter body. Reality is with this design all you have to do is turn the cap until it makes contact with the body. The O ring will seal the cap and torque is not required.
Here is my old housing, perfect as can be.
From start to this, 15min.
Clean up and new cooler installed. ~15min.
Upon Re-Install I ended up replacing the lower manifold with the PUG one. This took maybe another 15min as I had to remove the injectors and fuel rail and clean and lubricate the seals.
Re-assembly was also quick another 10min, all and all I started at 2:30pm and had the engine fired up at 3:30pm. 1hr not 6, not 7, 1hr. I used a 8mm, 10mm,13mm and E8 for the bolts on the cooler. I also used a set of pliers, a pick and clip remover tool.
For those that pay 6-800$, think about this for a moment and realize how much money you are wasting.
In todays days of high interest rates, exenses going up on a monthly basis, I am no mechanic and I was able to replace this part myself, you should be too! Youtube is flooded with videos on how to make this part swap.
BTW: The lower intake manifold does provide a healthy gain in torque especialy from 2-3k RPM range. Next up is the 8 hole injectors from the PUG to see if we can improve fuel economy.
