The Achilles heel of the Winnebago Rialta is its transmission. I’ve been especially nervous with this because it has 150,000 miles on it and none of the service receipts (I have a lot of them) indicated that the transmission fluid was changed. Yikes!
The reason it is the Achilles heel is this: VW (the chassis builder) bolted a tiny metal box about 9″x6″ directly to the transmission that allowed the fluid to flow in one bolt, through 4 small tubes and then out the other bolt. They connected the box to the engine coolant lines to control the temperature. All this accomplished was to insure that the transmission fluid was hotter than the engine. Much hotter at times.
I removed the “box” and installed a cooler kit purchased from Makco Transmission Parts. Now the fluid flows from the transmission to a separate air cooled unit mounted in front of the radiator.
Holy cow! The transmission fluid is now substantially cooler than the engine coolant and it fluctuates independently of the engine temperature. For example, when driving to my house after everything had warmed up I used to see a transmission fluid temperature of 250 degrees as I created the last hill before my driveway. Now I am seeing 168 degree transmission fluid at that spot while the engine temperature is around 200 degrees.
With this cooler installed, I am no longer nervous about stressing the transmission and am looking forward to getting in the road.
Ciao
Paul