Normal Transmission Temperature

[4402tuff4u]

Maybe this has been asked before, but not sure. Does anyone know what is the normal running temperature for a 727 with 440 power plant? Was reading the Car Craft magazine last night and saw an advertisement for a Temperature Gauge that range in temp between 100 - 320 degrees. Just curious. Thanks.

[John_Kunkel]

"Normal" running temperature depends on a lot of circumstances which are different for each car but the "preferred" temperature range would be 160 °F to 200 °F.

[beenaround]

john is correct.however the higher the temp you start to reach what we call "half life".in other words oem fluid may live all day at 220 degrees but at 300 degrees it will break down in maybe 100 miles and toast the trans.in the old days our 440 police cruisers had a recommended fluid change every 12k miles.todays ram trucks turn on the high temp light at 265 degrees i believe.research the fluid your going to use. old mopar transmissions use atf3 now which is being upgraded to atf4.i don't have any personel experience with the fluid in our old cars though.

[4402tuff4u]

Thanks for the replies guys.

[The Mad Scientist]

john is correct.however the higher the temp you start to reach what we call "half life".in other words oem fluid may live all day at 220 degrees but at 300 degrees it will break down in maybe 100 miles and toast the trans.in the old days our 440 police cruisers had a recommended fluid change every 12k miles.todays ram trucks turn on the high temp light at 265 degrees i believe.research the fluid your going to use. old mopar transmissions use atf3 now which is being upgraded to atf4.i don't have any personel experience with the fluid in our old cars though.

I thought the old Mopar transmisions used dextron 3.

ATF 3 is what neons and stratus' etc. use.  It's a synthetic blend.  And it's a very very very large no no to put dextron in an ATF tranny.  Not sure if that holds true the other way around, it's never come up before. 

[John_Kunkel]

ATF+3 is intended for the later transmissions with lockup converters and is still a dino fluid, the new ATF+4 is reportedly a synthetic and it replaces +3 in all but a few transmissions.

Dexron is still the correct factory fluid for non-lockup transmissions but the plus fluids can also be used.