1/2 Ton trucks and cooling sytem performance

A bit late to the game with an apples to oranges i had. My old 2011 Ram 1500 outdoorsman with 3.92 gears an the 5.7L. While altitude was never much of an issue on the flat prairies but I did tow heavy quite often.

The only time I managed to get the transmission temp up to 225F was with a very heavy head wind while trying to maintain 100 to 110km/h. That 545RFE was out of gears and in between gears for over 100km. The coolant was fine though. Although I had 12,000 pounds of hay stacked up very high.

Some other times I could get the coolant to 225F and the oil to 240F was towing 14,000 pounds up a steep grade for a mile. The transmission temp was fine as it held a gear and kept the revs sky high. I could not muster anything above 60km/h by the top.

Other than playing half ton hero, that truck never batted an eye with any other load.

Now my work truck, which is a 2018 F150 5L with the 10 speed. Haven't towed very much with it but I was doing some offloading at work today. Had to follow some goat trails that were pretty steep. Held it in 1st gear and needed 4x4 to traverse a bunch of it. The fans kicked on high and I managed 246F transmission temperature after just a couple miles bombing around. That really surprised me as I have never hit those temps in similar conditions with other makes.
 
A bit late to the game with an apples to oranges i had. My old 2011 Ram 1500 outdoorsman with 3.92 gears an the 5.7L. While altitude was never much of an issue on the flat prairies but I did tow heavy quite often.

The only time I managed to get the transmission temp up to 225F was with a very heavy head wind while trying to maintain 100 to 110km/h. That 545RFE was out of gears and in between gears for over 100km. The coolant was fine though. Although I had 12,000 pounds of hay stacked up very high.

Some other times I could get the coolant to 225F and the oil to 240F was towing 14,000 pounds up a steep grade for a mile. The transmission temp was fine as it held a gear and kept the revs sky high. I could not muster anything above 60km/h by the top.

Other than playing half ton hero, that truck never batted an eye with any other load.

Now my work truck, which is a 2018 F150 5L with the 10 speed. Haven't towed very much with it but I was doing some offloading at work today. Had to follow some goat trails that were pretty steep. Held it in 1st gear and needed 4x4 to traverse a bunch of it. The fans kicked on high and I managed 246F transmission temperature after just a couple miles bombing around. That really surprised me as I have never hit those temps in similar conditions with other makes.
The new 10 speed F150's only have a liquid/oil cooler for the transmission and its common for them to get hot. This is typical around the forums.

Prior to 2018 they had the liquid/oil cooler in the radiator end tank, and then an air cooler in series with that. I've yet to see my 2014's transmission get over 210. It also never runs below 200F once up to temp because its thermostatically controlled.
 
You realize I linked that same test like 5 posts before yours. I am aware of the test.

Your Silverado also has a radiator that is quite a bit bigger than my 2014 F150 radiator and similar in size to the 2015+ Ecoboost radiator. I am guessing your truck does stay cool as its peak output at 11,000' would be around 250 hp/270 tq. Thats if you can even get it to sit at the correct RPM with the transmission. The Ecoboost is only slightly limited in Torque to 390 at that elevation per the tables in my HPTuners software and somewhere around 300 HP.
I wanted to say that I would prefer less horsepower going up a 9,000 foot pass than something with more horsepower/torque that is going to give me a "reduced power/overheating" message going up a pass. How much horsepower does that (message) take away?
 
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