First, Allot yourself about 3-4hrs to do this job.
-Start by removing the front bumper.
-There are 4 17mm hex head bolts behind the headlights that are the main support bolts. There there are two 10mm hex head bolts on the rear upper corners inside the bumper cover. There there are two 17mmhex head bolts on the bottom of the cover. There is also a single 10mm hex head on the center of the opening of the bumper. Finally remove the corner lights to get the two 10mm hex head bolts holding the cover to the frame. This should allow you to pull the bumper off the car and look like this
Now you can mount the filter assembly with relative ease. Drill at least two holes for the mount to get bolted to using the supplied screws. Then assemble the filter mount with the threaded snout short end toward the mount. Use the 2 90* fittings w/ teflon tape and install them into the filter housing so they point away from the mount. At this point, go ahead and attach the mount to the frame rail as seen here.
OK with all that out of the way, it is time to mount the trans cooler. This is a relatively big cool for the space it occupies so fitments might not be perfect on all cars, esp ones that have been in accidents before. I remove the ambient temp sensor mounting bracket and slide the cooler behind the center rad support. Then push a fastener from the backside of the radiator through the fins of the radiator, A/C condenser, then through the trans cooler as seen here
You can use more than one fastener if you please but it is not entirely needed.
Now we move onto the hose routing. The filter has a check valve in it so you really need to pay attention to the flow or else you could end up cooking a trans. The filter assembly is marked IN and OUT. You need to route the cooler line that used to go to the Passenger side of the radiator out to the IN fitting. This is the feed directly from the transmission and thus the need for it to go to the IN fitting. There is room between the frame rail and the radiator to run the line though and over to the filter.
Now from the OUT fitting of the filter to the external cooler. Run this line to the top of the cooler (remember heat rises).
Then run a new line from the bottom fitting of the cooler back between the radiator and the frame and to the passenger side fitting on the bottom of the radiator.
Tighten all your supplied hose clamps properly and fill the filter with transmission oil. Then put the filter on the mount and tighten it down. Don't try and kill it but make sure it is very snug. Should look like this
Now that all your lines are routed and the cooler and filter are mounted it is time to put the bumper back on the reverse of the removal. Pay attention to the routing of the hoses around the bumper beams because it is possible to pinch one off and you wouldn't want to do that.
After the bumper is back on, this is what you should have
I know this seems like the hard way of doing it by removing the bumper and all but it will save time and frustration by trying to drill holes for the mount behind the bumper cover. Not to mention it allows you to mount the cooler in front of the A/C condenser so you don't heat soak the fluid while running your air conditioning. I also prefer to run the fluid in this series. Transmission->filter->external cooler->stock cooler->transmission. Now I do this for one reason. The stock "cooler" is not meant to cool at all really. It is meant to control the temperature of the fluid to keep it at ideal operating temp whether it be too cold outside or too hot. So this will help the transmission from creating too much heat for the stock cooler to handle yet allow the trans to get fluid back to it at the ideal operating temperature which is around 180-190*F... Same temp as the coolant
Hope this helps
Tom