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Front grille cover for cold weather ...

montanaman

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Western Montana
I have a large 3-row radiator, and it gets cold as hell here in Montana in the winter. I want to buy or make a front grille cover for cold weather. I've got a piece of cardboard up now.

Anybody have a link to a commercially-made one? Or ... anybody ever make one themselves. I'd like a good design that can be adjusted to suit the temps.

Here is what I want it to do:
- Have a small opening in front of the fan clutch, so that the thermostatic clutch surface will get some air to function properly. Kind of like four corners that can be pulled back to expose a diamond-shaped opening.
- The opening should be adjustable ...
- Should have an easy system of attachment, removal, and adjustment.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

And a question: if you block off the grill completely, the radiator fan can't really suck air from around the grille can it? In other words, should I focus on covering the grille, or the radiator itself?
 
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Can't help ya on the cover.

Been fishing any?
 
I was also thinking about doing this. I talked to one of the local auto interior companies who said that they could make a cold front out of vinyl that would snap on and off for around $100. Might check with one of your local guys.
 
I had thought about making a grill cover but never actually ended up doing it. My thinking was that exterior grill covers look dumb IMO so why not mount some aluminum sheet to the back of the grill to keep it hidden or even look like an aftermarket inset. Figured be best not to block off the airflow entirely and would drill a series/pattern of small holes in the sheet between the grill struts for better flow in stop and go traffic. Not really adjustable but maybe some ideas for ya.
 
Get a piece of extruded aluminum, that stamped stuff they sell in 2x4 ft sheets at home depot with the pattern cut in it, it won't totally block the air but should slow it down quite a bit, at least 50% or more.
I'd bend it to fit the slightly rounded contour, at least in my 98, then hit up a leather store for some snaps, tandy leather used to have kits that had an anvil and another piece for hammering the snap cap on like a rivet.
Screw the snaps, male end, into the grill, female caps on to the aluminum or you could just screw it in directly but then if you want to take it off you have to undo like 12+ screws.
Depending on how good you are with a sewing machine you could also go pickup some naugahyde at almost any fabric store, cut it to fit and put a 2" wide seam all the way round, two pieces, again snaps but this time add a couple of extra snaps so you can unsnap both centers and open up a V in the middle. I've seen this done on alot of tractor trailers. You could probably even use some heavy duty velcro in lieu of snaps.
 
Three row rads tend to be high flow rads and the pump at idle may have a hard time pushing water to the heater core. If you have one of them high flow T-stat also or if you have big holes drilled in the T-stat. The heater core depend on a little resistance in the coolant system for a good flow to it. Reduce this resistance and your heater gets cold sometimes. As always this is a hard call over the net.
Also have you flush or replaced you heater? Is your coolant full? Belt tight? Does your engine get up to temp? LUCK
 
badron said:
The heater core depend on a little resistance in the coolant system for a good flow to it. Reduce this resistance and your heater gets cold sometimes.
The heater works beautifully with no problems.

Jim Mesthene said:
If your thermostat works properly, you don't need to cover the radiator.
That's what I thought too ... but it turns out it's a little more complicated than that.

The 3-row radiator cools much better than the 2-row, so in extreme cold weather, the coolant temp returning to the motor is much too cold. What's happening is that the temp goes up to 210, and the t-stat starts to open at 195, which allows that very cold coolant to enter the motor. Its so cold that the motor coolant temp goes down to about 150 or so ... very fast. Faster than the t-stat can close. And it keeps going like that ... up to 210, down to 150, repeat. I have a high-end RobertShaw T-stat, so that's not the problem. As soon as I put some cardboard in front of the rad, it stopped bouncing around and settled at around 205 or so.

Let's not highjack this thread into a discussion of the properties of a 3-row radiator ... that's been done to death. I love the 3-row in the summer, which often gets over 100 degrees here (not to mention our trips to Mexico). But for the winter, when it often gets down to 20 or 30 below zero, I need a grille cover. There's a reason you see big semi trucks with grille covers. Their t-stats are working just fine. But they need extreme cooling capability for hauling heavy loads in the summer, and then have too much cooling capacity in the northern winters. And the thermostat can't completely control that.

If you have ideas for a grille cover, great. But if you want to talk about t-stats and 3-row rads, let's do that on a different thread.

Any more ideas for grille cover? Anybody ever seen a writeup for someone who made one?

Thanks!!
 
I actually have seen one *somewhere* on the web, I remember it being a one piece and it attached with snaps, I just don't remember where.
 
I had one on the last Jeep. It was $30 at CDN Tire for a winter vinyl cover and a summer bug mesh. It came with about a dozen button snaps to attach it to the grill.

I check the CDN Tire website and couldn't find them... but I'm sure a store would ship you one if you called. www.canadiantire.ca They also sell a battery blanket that you can rig up to the block heater plug. That was a big help for -40C nights.

If you can't get a vinyl cover, cardboard works find too. Just cover the front grill and attach it with zip straps to the grill... WOrks in a pinch.
 
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OK, I there are a ton of threads about 3 row vs 2 row rads. You are saying the 3 row has much more cross sectional area than a 2 row, right? So you needed to add more fluid with the 3 core?

I found that my 90 rad was 30% blocked, internally, during a coring job. It now runs "much cooler" than it did before.

With the thermostat closed, there is nearly no circulation through the radiator.

The advantage of blocking the front of the grill is to maintain a higher temperature inside the engine compartment due to decreased air circulation. It has nothing to do with the radiator.

flame me
 
Three row rads tend to be high flow rads and the pump at idle may have a hard time pushing water to the heater core

Thats a real good point, fluid will always take the path of least resistance.

As far as 2 core verse 3 core, I have a High flow 2 core.
3 core radiators generally have less flow than a 2 core but more surface.

I ran hot with a 3 core but the 2 core high flow fixed my overheating problem.
 
sjx40250 said:
With the thermostat closed, there is nearly no circulation through the radiator.

That is true ... with the thermostat closed, the fluid in the radiator is just sitting there, not circulating.

And what do you think is happening to that fluid while it's sitting still in the radiator? It has more time to get very cold. When that extra-cold fluid comes back in and hits the block after the t-stat opens up again, that's where the problems start.

sjx40250 said:
The advantage of blocking the front of the grill is to maintain a higher temperature inside the engine compartment due to decreased air circulation. It has nothing to do with the radiator.

That is not true. The "decreased air circulation" that you talk about has a huge effect on the radiator. If air doesn't flow through the radiator, it can't cool as effectively. Reducing airflow through a radiator, reduces its contact with air ... thus it transfers less heat from the fluid to the air. So ... the fluid exiting the bottom of the radiator hits the block at a better (warmer) temp. That means that the t-stat has to stay slightly more open, and results in not such a huge temp difference between the bottom of the engine block, where the cold fluid enters, and the top of the block, where the hot fluid exits. It also stops the fluid temps in the block from bouncing back and forth from 150-215. Without the cardboard, I get the slowly bouncing temp gauge. With the cardboard, the temp settles down at 205 or so.

sjx40250 said:
flame me.

Why say something like that? I have no desire to get into a pissing match with you or anyone else. If you're dying for an argument ... why not start a thread titled "It's stupid to cover grilles in the winter" or something like that. As I mentioned above, I'm looking for info on grille cover design and availability. I'm hoping people will be responsible NAXJA forum users, and not try to hijack the thread into an argument.

Has anybody made a grille cover?
 
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elguapo22 said:
I had one on the last Jeep. It was $30 at CDN Tire for a winter vinyl cover and a summer bug mesh. It came with about a dozen button snaps to attach it to the grill.
Thanks a lot for answering. $30 is a great price. I'm kind of itching to make one myself, but for $30, I guess there's no point -- mostly I just do these kinds of things for fun.

I'm in NW Montana. I'll try to get a number of a CDN Tire store in Alberta and see what they are charging these days and if they can ship it to me.
 
montanaman said:
Thanks for your help!! I did a search on LUND, and it turns out they also make a bug screen/Winter front combo, and they have it for all XJs later than '87. Check out this link:

http://www.realtruck.com/productline/283/1080/1/fia_winter_front_and_bug_screen.html

Not bad huh? Now the next thing to do is try to make one.

This is exactly what I was looking at having made, and at half the price. Thanks for the link, montanaman. If I'm ever in your neck of the woods, I'll buy you a cold one.
 
mtnxj said:
This is exactly what I was looking at having made, and at half the price. Thanks for the link, montanaman. If I'm ever in your neck of the woods, I'll buy you a cold one.
Yeah ... you bet!! I just noticed you're in Montana ... have we swapped PMs before? We should trade phone numbers to help each other when we run into problems.
 
I just use cardboard. It's cheap & I don't have to remember where I put it next winter. JIM.
 
ILLXJ said:
I just use cardboard. It's cheap & I don't have to remember where I put it next winter. JIM.
Yeah ... I've got cardboard up there now, but it's just shoved in behind the license plate, and sort of s-bent back up against the grille. I figure if I'm going to do something to make it more stable, I might as well put something nice on there. And the bug screen might do some good in the summer to keep the bugs out of the radiator.
 
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