my 2001 does have a heat exchanger. It is on the right side of the engine. It looks like a small cylindrical air tank. When I changed my tranny line to put the inline trans temp sender line in, it was a pain to work on. I also removed the stop ball that is in the hard line to the exchanger.

The blowby bottle is the best mod that you can do yourself I think. I have mentioned that to a few people that have had overheating problems and sure enough when we went and looked, the back of the rad was plugged up with oil and dirt. Simple Green works well and is non toxic.

Thanks all. GB, good stuff - I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

Marine, thanks also. When you say the "back" of the radiator you mean the shroud side, yes? I noticed a bit of gunk on the frontside in between the condenser and radiator - how it gets there I'm not sure. My blowby bottle has been missing since I got the truck - I've never seen one or where it mounts but my blow by hose is hanging right down to about the bottom of the front timing/engine cover.

Mike.

the heat exchanger is on all auto equipped trucks the 12v 2nd gens had them along with the screwy tranny lines. the heat exchanger is where the check ball valve is on these to keep pressure in line so you are able to get in start and drive and not wait for pressure to build up as it will blead off over time... I myself have bypassed mine as it was full of dust etc and ran a bigger cooler up front had to modify the bumper to fit it and added a permacool with built in fan and mounted it directly to the metal cross bar that I would call the bottom of the core support. even the 3rd gen autos have a heat exchanger my dad has an 04 and we did a tranny service and flush the other day and I checked it out looks a lot better than what us 2nd gens have. the hot line running out of your tranny goes directly to the heat exchanger this is where most of us change out the line to a 94-98 auto line that has a built in place for a temp sender to mount or buy one from genos so we can get our temps from there. It doesn't look the lines really run up to the passenger side of the block through the small exchanger then down between motor and tranny up to the factory trans cooler then to back of tranny.

Yes, the shroud side. Crap will get between the condenser and the rad as well.

Heat exchanger
 

Both my '99and my '01 have the heat exchanger. It's below the exhaust manifold, bolted to the pax side of the engine in front, and the backside is bolted to the tans adapter.

Your truck is probably due for a radiator cleaning

my 01's radiator when I pulled it out to clean:
Attachment 51813

my 90 auto, 01 auto, and 06 auto have heat exchangers on them, they are located under the manifold from factory

Ian