XJ radiators, a review.

[kastein]

I'm actually still on the crummy aluminum and plastic OE equivalent I installed summer '21... bought it at CAP, no idea who made it. I was using the truck to shuttle moving boxes up the hill from my house to the shipping pod for a cross country move and it decided to overheat and blow the end tank out, and I needed the truck to be running again an hour ago, so I simply got what was available and figured I'd upgrade "later". Well, 3 whole years and a cross country move later, I still haven't, and it still cools well enough that I barely hit 180 in 100 degree temps because I've been far too lazy to replace my thermostat again. It gets into closed loop and has good-enough heat in the winter, so there is little to no motivation to do anything about that.

I have pretty much decided through inertia that I use whatever cheap crap radiator is available when I need one and they all seem to work fine so I probably will never "upgrade".

 

[maxbraketorque]

Kind of interesting to see an evolving view point that a quality single row may be the best option. If my Cold Case leaks, I'm definitely going to try a Spectra Premium next.

 

[algebraic429]

Kind of interesting to see an evolving view point that a quality single row may be the best option. If my Cold Case leaks, I'm definitely going to try a Spectra Premium next.

From my armchair novice perspective and from talking to my mechanic who has 20+ years working on mostly jeeps I believe the issue with the aluminum radiators is quality control, and air flow. In my example previous owner installed a 4row oversized radiator thats also thicker but is running the stock fan set up. With the AC on temps creep up and keep going up and the aux fan makes difference. Ive confirmed and replaced everything else it shouldn't do this but the cooling system is borderline so that on a hot day with the ac it pushes it over the edge. I think the extra rows, size and thickness reduces the effectiveness of the air flow just enough to do this. im going to swap in a stock radiator to confirm my thoughts but just my 2 cents.

 

[frijolee]

FWIW I bought a champion BC 1193. It's stout, but damn the cooling capacity is bad. Runs a full notch on the temp gauge higher than my stocker did on any hill. Overheated 6 times trying to drive up to ~14k feet. Rating the thing at 600 hp is a joke. I'm on mild bolt ons and can't make 150 hp. Bar and plate is not for things that care about cooling in any form of steady state. Thankfully, I realized this before 60 days and Champion let me return the BC1193. I was tempted give the Champion EC1193 a try as traditional tube and fin, but finally went with the general recommendation here:

Just got. Surprised they haven't solved the o-ring issue yet, but I was able to carve a relief under the big aluminum bolt head so the o-ring has a place to land.