Radiator options?

Greetings, hope you all are having a good weekend. I'll try to keep this short. My radiator is leaking transmission fluid from behind the upper transmission return line fitting:



^^You can see the fluid sitting on the radiator's little vertical ridges.

It looks like there's a PO band aid repair on there...a piece of tape? Anyway, it's a slow leak, but I'm guessing this means a new radiator in my near future. If that's the case, should I just go for the standard replacement, or upgrade to the three row? It's a stock '99 sport, 4.0 242. Daily driver, no wheeling whatsoever, but I'll be towing a little bit (just ordered an aux cooler and changed the rear dif. oil).

I'm assuming there's no real fix for the leak? If there is a fix that'll last I'd run that for a while, but I'm not too optimistic there.

Thanks!

Yes, a radiator replacement is in your future. It is a sad fact that, for the most part, all of them go south.

My installation is, admittedly, extreme. I run the Flex-a-lite aluminium radiator along with the three fans it comes with.

There are a ton of quality replacements out there and you may get a ton of opinions as to which one is best. I ran CSF for years.

Check DPGOffroad. They are good people and have reasonable prices.

O-Gauge Steamer said:

Yes, a radiator replacement is in your future. It is a sad fact that, for the most part, all of them go south.

My installation is, admittedly, extreme. I run the Flex-a-lite aluminium radiator along with the three fans it comes with.

There are a ton of quality replacements out there and you may get a ton of opinions as to which one is best. I ran CSF for years.

Check DPGOffroad. They are good people and have reasonable prices.

Click to expand...

Thanks. While I don't think I need the Flex-a-lite (especially after checking the price :shocked, the CSF looks like a good product. The Spectra at $85 shipped may be what I ultimately purchase unless anyone has had bad experiences with those. Thanks again for the reply. Cheers!

Well.... I did say it was an extreme solution... I always went with the Heavy Duty version of the radiator. Usually, but not always, the manufacturers will offer one for the automatic with A/C.

Just make sure the one you install matches the what is on the engine. As in with Automatic Transmission and With Air Conditioning.

Why Jeep decided to make so many different radiators is anyone's guess...

I went with the CSF radiator from DPGoffroad and am very happy with it, good company to deal with and just a little more than the other radiator shops. I think it's worth a few extra bucks to support a smaller vendor.

If you go CSF, get the two row not the three row

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I cheaped out and bought the aftermarket OEM clone from Spectra. Got it with a B&M 14.4K BTU tranny cooler for ~$140 shipped from Amazon. It's a new-to-me XJ, so I've been buying a lot of small parts here and there to get it back to a reliable state, so I saved a few bucks here...hopefully not a pound foolish purchase. If the Spectra sucks I won't be able to say that I didn't know of better options...hopefully it'll go as long as my factory radiator (140K). Cheers.

Especially up here in the rust belt, they all fail eventually.

Do yourself a favor and compare the trans cooler fittings (though I see you're installing an external cooler - good idea) before unscrewing anything. Some of them are different and I'm not entirely clear on the year splits for it, so it's best to make sure the new one will actually fit before you're elbows deep in the darn thing and can't get to the parts store anymore.

kastein said:

Especially up here in the rust belt, they all fail eventually.

Do yourself a favor and compare the trans cooler fittings (though I see you're installing an external cooler - good idea) before unscrewing anything. Some of them are different and I'm not entirely clear on the year splits for it, so it's best to make sure the new one will actually fit before you're elbows deep in the darn thing and can't get to the parts store anymore.

Click to expand...

Will do, thanks. I'll post a couple of boring pics of the radiator and cooler install if it all works out this weekend. My after-work hours are currently being consumed by a rear hitch install, speaking of the rust belt. 40 minutes my a**.

Don't remind me, I have to pull my hitch off (and the gas tank out) to fix the giant rot hole in the bottom of one of the frame rails... that is going to be fun.

If your radiator uses the angled barb/quickdisconnect setup at the bottom fitting instead of the 3/8" inverted flare, and the radiator has the 3/8" inverted flare on both top and bottom fittings, you can always buy a section of 3/8" inverted flare SAE thread brake line at the parts store, cut one end off, bend it, and then use a hose clamp instead of the stupid quickdisconnect you're probably going to end up cutting off the end of the hose anyways. The quick disconnects are basically no good once they get full of salt and sand, they're more properly called quick connects because they go together nice at the factory but there's nothing "quick" or "disconnect" about them ten or fifteen years later.

Some of the aftermarket radiators are 3/8" inverted flare on both fittings, but include an adapter to convert the lower fitting to quick disconnect so it fits all years. There may be a third setup, someone posted a thread about this kind of difficulty recently, but I can't remember what model-year it was or what their setup looked like.

Great info^^, I appreciate the detailed advice. Radiator's still in the box until tomorrow evening.