Transmission cooler PLUS radiator?

Last night I crawled up under El Scampo to measure the barb on the cooler. It is 0.375" (3/8ths), not including the barb. Then I went to trace the lines like you guys suggested, in order to figure out the fluid flow direction.

First, I'm going to have to put the front end of the car up on my floor dollies in order to get far enough under the vehicle to trace the lines to / from the trans. This car sits L-O-W.

2nd, I traced the hard trans lines just prior to the cooler (just couldn't see them all the way back to the trans). Here's something I wasn't expecting.

From a hard original line to / from the transmission, is attached a plastic sort of fiber tube (feels like fiberglass) hose clamped on. Then that (I'm going to refer to it as fiberglass until I know better) tube is sort of long and wrapped around in the area under the radiator, but finally attaches to a larger hard pipe (this is what I didn't expect). This hard pipe is near the bottom and in front of where the condensor sits, sort of in the neighborhood of behind the front bumper, maybe a skosh below it. That big hard pipe takes about 4 laps back and forth, the length of each lap being about the width of the radiator and condensor. Then back to the fiberglass line. Then to the cooler. From the cooler back to the fiberglass line. Then to the hard original line and back to the radiator.

To me the bigger metal tubes in front look original, due to the way they are fastened in place. All original looking bracketry and fasteners. Those lines look like they are specifically meant to cool fluid. Larger diameter pipe, long length wrapped back and forth in an area to catch cool air.

Is this bigger hard cooling lines something you guys are familiar with? I'll try to get some pictures if need be. It was getting dark in the garage at that time.


7milesout