XJ radiators, a review.

The radiator in my 2000 blew on my last week in a fairly spectacular fashion (to be covered in the unicorn thread).

Obvs I don't want to put the same thing back in, but I wasn't really sure what to replace it with. The Mishimoto seems to be the new hotness, but they have a very bad reputation. CSF is always classic, but is copper on brass an outdated technology? Lots of performance and chinesium aluminum options. Its so hard to choose without putting your hands on them.

So in true 'nothing in moderation' fashion, I ordered them all. Or close enough to count, at least.

Ordered up a CSF, a Mishimoto, already had a Griffin and Mopar HD. Mark brought me his Novak. Dallas has a new in box Champion at SFR, Bricker has an FF Dynamics, and Filar has a CBR that I can put my hands on. Representing all of the $100 china aluminum ones, I ordered the Auto Dynasty which was $98 to my door. I'll pick up a Spectra which is what every parts house carries as well.




I'll start with what I have at home, but keep adding to this as I get around town and put hands on all of them. I had intended to gather everything up at SFR and do it all at once, but I really want to pick one and fix my jeep.

I started off under the assumption I'm going to keep and run the CSF, and send the rest of these back. So we'll start there.

CSF 2671, their 3 core performance unit, purchased from Rock Auto for $235 to my door after a discount code. Copper core with brass bowls, brazed, with a 2 year manufacturer warranty.


Unboxing.




Well, this is a mess.





Very poorly packed, and the packing material is beat to hell.



Once we get the unit out, this is the same radiator I remember buying 15 years ago.





Lets look a little closer though.

Neither hose fitting is round.



There's what looks like what speckled paint over everything, and the black paint is flaking off.

It does have the trans cooler fittings, brazed in. Not removable or replaceable.





It has accomodations for the AC condenser.






Does not come with a radiator cap.



Plastic drain plug, no nipple, has to be removed all the way to drain. Very messy.



3 1/2" cores with some space in between. Almost 2" thick, but the cores were closer to 1.8" or so.



I should have rotated this photo but forgot. Oh well.




I have to admit at this point I'm a little underwhelmed.

Next we'll look at the Auto Dynasty. $108 to my door via amazon. I picked this particular unit because Poor Boys Racing is running it in their 4600 XJ with a Russ Pottenger engine, and it is *getting the job done*. They are on their second unit in 5 years, the first taking impact damage.

I cannot find any warranty info on this unit, but at $98 who cares?

http://a.co/d/fxfpfi6


Unboxing.



Well this isn't pretty. But better than CSF I guess.



Maybe they could have used some more foam in here.




Once I have it out of the box, this looks like a fairly well built, no frills, aluminum radiator. Sharp edges, strait lines, and rough cuts.



There are accommodations for a trans cooler, but it did not come with the fittings.




Now this is fancy, even though its an open style radiator, it has the fitting for a renix era coolant temp sensor! I remember when I did my CSF swap ages ago, Mike Rollins had to cut the fitting out of my old radiator and braze it into my CSF. On big bird we just wired the fan on full time instead.



Interesting that there is a smaller bowl with the hose fitting hanging off, but I'm willing to bet if we did the math this would not be impeding flow at all, and the shorter bowl will make it a lot easier to get trans and steering cooler hoses past it.



Weld quality looks good, and it comes with a radiator cap, albeit a really cheap one.







Accomodations for the AC condenser. I did mention sharp edges didnt i?




About the same thickness as the CSF. 3 1/2" aluminium cores with some space between them.





Again with a crappy plastic drain plug, but I don't feel as bad about it on this less expensive unit.








All in all, I'm fairly impressed with what you get for the price. Given what I see here and the glowing recommendation from the guys at Poor Boys Racing, I think that this is a solid budget choice for anyone.


As with any aluminum radiator, you want to make sure to run only distilled water and coolant. Something about minerals reacting with aluminum and upsetting the PH level blah blah blah, the smart guys keep telling me if you run tap water they will leak in 2 years.

Next up we have the Mopar 5191929AA, which Rock Auto had listed as the "maximum cooling package" radiator, although they no longer list it at all.

$171 to my door last year, I purchased and ran this in the Unicorn.

Aluminum core on plastic tanks. 2 3/4" cores.






Came with no radiator cap. Has trans cooler fittings. No provisions for renix temp sensor.



Came with funky slots for the mounting studs, and spare hardware.




Plastic drain plug with a nipple. If you had room to get a hose in there you could make draining much more tidy.




No accomodations for AC condenser mount. Had to add my own.




I can never say this radiator performed well. I still got warm on climbs and my aux fan came on a lot even when I wouldn't expect it to.

And then there's the whole thing where the end of the fill neck exploded off of the radiator on the freeway and pumped all of the coolant into my air box.

Not a feature I'm fond of?




Would not buy again. Will warranty this one out and toss it in the garage for an emergency spare.

Now on to my favorite. The Griffin 591-LB. I seem to recall these were around $795. The first one failed after 5 years of hard racing and about 8 rolls, while no longer under warranty Griffin gave us a 2nd unit for $400 shipped under the racer program.

This is the radiator out of 4643. It performed most excellently there. I did try and install it on the unicorn before starting down this road; if I didn't have AC it would have bolted in and been perfect; but its so big that it would not fit with the AC condenser, nor would the lines fit around it.


Ignore this looking a little beat, we have been hard on it..

2 1.5" aluminium cores with extra large bowls.





Good quality welds.




I don't remember what it came with for a drain plug, but we ditched it so that it was easier to fit hoses past it in the racecar.




It had accomodations for a trans cooler, but came with plugs installed and stayed that way.




No accomodations for an AC condenser.



Cores are tig welded, and then coated with epoxy to help protect against cracks in severe use.




If you want to go full retard and don't want AC, this is a very good option. I think this one is going into Big Bird.

Now we have the Novak KryoFlow.

This is an expensive unit, and I can't get it on amazon with an easy return. They sell it in a standard XJ config, but I borrowed one from Mark that is setup for an LS swap. Quality and size is the same, but its double pass and both hoses are on one side. This one is also setup with electric fans and a stainless overflow, its about a $900 package.



Well packaged.





I'm not sure if these are accommodations for a trans cooler or not. If it weren't a borrowed unit I'd pull the plugs and find out.



Does not use the rubber isolators at the top, comes with a stud instead. Interesting.



3 1" cores. This suckers big.



Giant bowls. No drain plug at all.



All of them come with a remote fill neck.



And this has the stainless expansion bottle.







No AC condenser accommodations, and I don't see how you could fit one with this beast. We'll find out, as Mark intends to make that work..



Thanks for letting me borrow this thing Mark.

Now onto the new Mishimoto MMRAD-XJ-89.

$431 to my door via Amazon. The radiator has a lifetime warranty. I understand from reviews that Mishimoto is kind of a pain in the ass to deal with. They charge you to warranty the unit even if it's product failure, and they take sometimes two weeks to ship one out. That said, Amazon is not an authorized reseller which voids the warranty completely. But Amazon honors all manufacturer warranties on auto parts, so Amazon will replace this for life with free prime shipping.



Very well packaged.



Inside of the good packaging is a sealed bag for freshness.



Accommodations for the AC condenser, but removable so you don't need to have it in your way if you're in a racecar.



And some spiffy swag.



Built in trans cooler. Fittings not replaceable.





I like that the hose ports come capped to keep debris out.


Accomodations for the renix temp sensor again. I like this.



Nice drain plug, no hose barb for clean draining, but it is magnetic to collect debris out of the cooling system.



Comes with a cap, and at 19 psi, giving you an extra 9* of cooling before boiling over.




Overflow is NPT, comes with a nice barb fitting but you can install an AN fitting in a race car if you wanted.



2 1" cores.
















This looks like a cracked weld? That's a little disappointing to find on an otherwise beautiful $400 radiator. Given the location I don't think it would stop me from installing it, but it would have stopped me from shipping it.

I'll review Champion, Spectra, FF Dynamics, CBR and maybe Modine as I get my hands on them.

For now I need to pick from the chinesium, Mishimoto and CSF above so I can install one.

did you happen to get closer pics of the fans and their labels?

the novak one

I did. I did not post them because electric fans are for people who want to overheat. This is not the thread for that discussion though.

Pics here. FWIW, those fan's won't fit with a 4.0, the V8 is shorter.

http://cal.advlifestyle.com/index.php?/category/7

Are you going to do any testing of the radiators?

RCP Phx said:

Are you going to do any testing of the radiators?

Click to expand...

No. I just ordered $1,000 in radiators so I can look at them. I really want to send most of them back.

That said, I haven't decided what I'm running. Opinions are welcome.

I vote you run the Novak with the requisite LS motor.

I need to keep my eye on this thread. My 2006 installed copper brass is showing its age. Retirement is not too far in the future.

In 2001, I installed a CSF 3 row in my then 1994 XJ which over heated badly after that. The tiny fins were clogged out of the box. No more tiny 3 rows for me.

I’ve used the CSF 3 row in two XJs for at least 10 years with great success after struggling with high temps. One might have a leak (hard to tell if it is just the hose).

I’d be interested to see how the Aluminum cheapo holds up compared to others since you are able to provide consistent feedback. Glad to see some cool research happening on here again!


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cal said:

Now onto the new Mishimoto MMRAD-XJ-89.

$431 to my door via Amazon. The radiator has a lifetime warranty. I understand from reviews that Mishimoto is kind of a pain in the ass to deal with. They charge you to warranty the unit even if it's product failure, and they take sometimes two weeks to ship one out. That said, Amazon is not an authorized reseller which voids the warranty completely. But Amazon honors all manufacturer warranties on auto parts, so Amazon will replace this for life with free prime shipping.

Click to expand...

The only charge I got when doing warranty with them was shipping. Wonder if that's new. At this point I'd lean towards Mishimoto, I need to replace mine shortly and it was at the top of the list.

Modine used to have a sweet 2 large core brass radiator that I would run in heartbeat but I think they switch to the cheap overseas junk years ago.

It's a shipping charge yes, you pay both ways for their failure. The rate goes up over time.

I couldn't even find a listing for modine.

Nice work.

Keep it up.

I have a motor in Russ' shop and I am going to want a new radiator when it comes time to put in the motor. I appreciate you putting in the effort to help me make an intelligent choice.

Weasel said:

Modine used to have a sweet 2 large core brass radiator that I would run in heartbeat but I think they switch to the cheap overseas junk years ago.

Click to expand...

The local radiator shop owner told me a few years back that Modine had quit the radiator business. I'm not sure how true that was. He might have meant they quit making GOOD radiators.
I've been running the same Modine 2 core since 2003. I had it rodded and cleaned after ten years, still going strong.