As these cars get older, little things slowly start letting go. If you have an RX with the towing package, you'll have a small but pretty beefy transmission cooler on the driver side behind the bumper (near fog light area). As time goes on, these things get pretty beat up. Hit with salt, road debris and more. Mine was one of the better ones I've seen on these, yet the bracket holding it to the car had holes in it and the shroud was dangling by just one bolt. Sure, I could probably keep running it, but if this thing decides to dump its fluid, that could mean goodbye to your trans.

These things aren't cheap either, new from Lexus they are a good 500 bucks at least! That's crazy! I wasn't impressed with the aftermarket options either. I've seen them on junkyard cars and they already look as bad as the original units that are already still hanging on for dear life. Well, I got lucky and found a NEW OEM 2010-2012 RX350 unit for 50 bucks. All it was missing was the plastic "shroud" piece that directs air into the unit. However, that didn't matter to me as the 3rd gen RX shroud won't even contour properly to our bumper anyway. I was already planning on throwing a universal one in or fitting one from a different car w/ my own brackets, but at that price it was a no-brainer just to get the OE unit.

You also don't have to get a unit made for these cars, as you can see I used a 2010-2012 RX350 one with no issues. The brackets and unit itself are the same, the only differences are in the rubber hoses and shrouds. This list below should provide every available option for these cars in terms of interchangeability:

2001-2013 Highlander (Excl Hybrid)
2004-2012 RX (Excl 400h and 450h)



To get to the cooler, you'll need to remove the front bumper. Make sure to apply heat to the mounting bolts as they can easily snap off if you're not careful. As you can see here, the 10-12 RX unit looks nearly identical, apart from the hose that comes with it. I actually ended up using that new OEM hose and it fit perfectly too







Fit like a glove!

I promise you those shroud bolts holding it on will break! If you want to get them off without damaging the shroud, use an induction heater and get the hardware hot (but not hot enough to melt the plastic), then use a vise grip on the other end. This will release it without damaging the plastic. Since one of the sides was already broken, I just used some big washers and a longer M6 bolt to hold it all together, this worked perfectly! Make sure the M6 bolt is long enough for the threads to engage, but not too long as it can contact the cooler assembly

You will need to add about 500 ml of transmission fluid after swapping this out. Maybe more or less depending on how much gets spilled. Make sure to get a reading when the car is fully up to temp while it is running

 

Thats great Matt.....Did you by-pass the radiator trans cooler?

 

I kept the radiator trans cooler. However, if your radiator ever fails and you want to do away with it. The RX400h radiator is the same size except it doesn't have the trans cooler. This only works for RX330s though as the 3MZ outlets are different vs. 2GR