Coolant lines disconnected?

I just bought an 87 BMW 325ic which has the transmission cooler lines disconnected and hanging loose in the engine compartment. The car seems to work fine and it looks like these lines were disconnected quite a while ago. Doesn't this hurt the transmission?



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This post was auto-generated based upon a question asked on our tech article page here: Pelican Technical Article: BMW Automatic Transmission Fluid Change

[Wayne 962]

That's very odd - I can't say I've heard of that before. They must have been disconnected because they were leaking and the previous owner or mechanic was too cheap to replace them. The cooler is there for a reason - to keep the transmission cool and prolong the life of the transmission. Without them, I'm sure you're probably shortening the life of the transmission. The flip side is that it may be cheaper to replace the whole transmission (if it fails down the road) at this point, than get the cooler and lines working properly.

- Wayne