XJ radiators, a review.

bjoehandley · Oct 23, 2018

cal said:
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.

Has anybody on here tried this radiator? My '98 needs a new one as well as an aux fan and that sub $100 price point is tempting.

bjoehandley · Oct 23, 2018

Sorry, can't seem to edit the above post, this is the one I intended to ask about.

cal said:
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.

Has anybody on here tried this radiator? My '98 needs a new one as well as an aux fan and that sub $100 price point is tempting.

cal · Oct 23, 2018

yes. Brian McNamera has one on his KOH XJ with 5 season on it, and says its been working great.

If I didn't run the Mishimoto that would have been my 2nd choice.

anthrax323 · Oct 23, 2018

cal said:
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.

Hey Cal,

Are you sure that's actually a Mopar? I picked up an HD radiator from the dealership a couple years ago (due to lack of availability elsewhere) after my original ruptured an tank at ~220,000 miles (PN 52080104AC), and it's remarkably different:

It performed remarkably well until I broke a piston skirt at ~240k last December. Finally wrapping up my mini-stroker build (~4.2L, 10.2:1) so I can report back my experiences with a hotter engine in the not-too-distant future.

But mine has the bottom studs, fan shroud brackets, the proper top studs for the isolators (although the pic above shows the original ones, I'll be replacing them), and the plastic molding quality is way, way better. I think it even came with a cap but I'm not 100% sure at this point.

cal · Oct 23, 2018

I'm sure. Mopar offered a steel framed part # (standard cooling) and an aluminium framed part number (maximum cooling).

Came in a mopar box. Had mopar stickers on it. Cross referenced to a bunch of places before ordering.

anthrax323 · Oct 23, 2018

cal said:
I'm sure. Mopar offered a steel framed part # (standard cooling) and an aluminium framed part number (maximum cooling).

Came in a mopar box. Had mopar stickers on it. Cross referenced to a bunch of places before ordering.

Interesting, right on. I can't find it in any of the 1994-2001 parts catalogs so I was curious. Good to know. (In 2000-2001, "Maximum Cooling" apparently changed to "Heavy Duty Cooling" in the parts catalog nomenclature.)

Anak · Oct 23, 2018

cal said:
I'm sure. Mopar offered a steel framed part # (standard cooling) and an aluminium framed part number (maximum cooling).

Came in a mopar box. Had mopar stickers on it. Cross referenced to a bunch of places before ordering.

Interesting.

That picture was the reverse in 2014.

My experience: https://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1110640

lazyxj · Oct 23, 2018

I have been running Mopar's 52080104AC radiators in both of my XJs, my brother's and a friend's XJ for many years and have been happy with the cooling capacity.
This radiator appears to be obsolete, finding one is getting hard and expensive

bjoehandley · Oct 23, 2018

cal said:
yes. Brian McNamera has one on his KOH XJ with 5 season on it, and says its been working great.

If I didn't run the Mishimoto that would have been my 2nd choice.

Thanks Cal, I'll get one on order after work, any suggestions on the aux fan to replace my rusted up stocker?

cal · Oct 23, 2018

I'm running this one. I can't say its good or bad, but that its working.

http://a.co/d/dvjfyPD

ehall · Oct 24, 2018

I have used the 52080104AC dual-core HD radiator and equivalents for several years, been pretty happy with it overall but it doesn't have a lot of excess cooling capacity. It drops the heat fine when the engine is below 2k RPMs but builds fast whenever it goes over 2500 RPMs or when the AC condenser is shedding heat. Then the radiator can't transfer heat fast enough to overcome. Not sure its the radiator or some other problem, good radiator should be able to overcome though

cal · Oct 29, 2018

A lot of catching up here, and some of it without photos. (and i'm going to skip around a little on the story line here)

After getting the car back together, I drove to work and back. Popped the hood to check for leaks around the trans cooler lines mostly. Found this shit.

I shared this shot as well as my newish and not broken motor mounts, OEM replacement fan clutch, etc with Mishimoto. They were nice enough to send me a replacement radiator.

I was really angry (not at them) when I took the car apart and didn't take photos. But I took a lot reassembling, we'll get to those.

I talked to Steve about this for a while. Our first thought was the fins on the OE replacement fan clutches available, and maybe people need to shave those. When I got the car apart it looked like this, though:

Those fins don't stick forward any more than the rest of the fan clutch.

Motor mounts were OE, but they looked great.

cal · Oct 29, 2018

Once thing I did notice, when i went to take it apart, one of the upper radiator isolators was missing its nut. I know for a fact it was there at assembly because I had to go out and buy hardware for it.

Then I thought about this thread for a while.

chasdb said:
Fit was off a bit, but was within adjustment of factory radiator support/ header mount. Just seemed torqued over to driver's side compared to how the Champion radiator was installed.

I remember having a similar experience. And I remember having to use a pry bar and pry REALLY HARD to get everything lined up a bit.

Went back and looked at the isolator, and the stud was broken off. (I don't have a picture here, sorry). Looking at the bottom of the upper core support, the radiator was moving around and leaving witness marks.

It doesn't look like it moved all that far, but apparently, it was far enough.

cal · Oct 29, 2018

So on to what next.

First, SFR Supersoft (tm) motor mounts. And about time, right? For good measure I threw in a water pump, thermostat, fan clutch, belt and some BRX silicone hoses.

Reinstalled the radiator. All new hardware (again). New bushings on the bottom and isolators on the top.

This is how far off my studs were from lining up.

If i force it over (like i did last time) I'm off on the bolts.

Instead of forcing it, I got the dremel out and opened up the holes a bit.

Everything dropped together this time. All new hardware everywhere.

Very solidly mounted, and enough room to get my hand in front of the fan clutch.

cal · Oct 29, 2018

Now, having done and installed this, I suspect its the studs on the bottom of the radiator and not the mounts on the top that are out of alignment, but that's going off of my gut feeling having installed this radiator 20 times over the last month. If I can get some time after dealing with my next problem I'll try and do some precision measuring there.

cal · Oct 29, 2018

On to testing again.

As with the last time I drove on the Mishimoto, I found high temps at idle. Does not compute.

This time instead of a gentle drive to work and back, I pulled out of my drive, right on to the nearest freeway on ramp, and floored it.

I got almost to the end of the onramp, too!

It looks like in the original [Mopar] radiator failure, when I drove to an off ramp, I didn't dodge the 0331 bullet as well as I thought I did.

I guess it's time to go visit Mr. Pottenger and bring home some horsepower.

cal · Oct 29, 2018

Hypoid said:
Two questions:

Has anyone pulled the plug for the RENIX fan switch to see how far back the transmission heat exchanger sits? My primary concern is coolant flow around the switch.

I thought of you this time.

There's plenty of room.

rockclimber · Oct 30, 2018

So what's your takeaway on the mishimoto?

worth doing?

you can PM me or call me if you don't want to post publicly.

cal · Oct 30, 2018

I think there are some minor fit issues that you should account for.

Would buy again.

cal · Oct 30, 2018

I have a slightly damaged one I can bring to SFR if you wanna check it out

XJ radiators, a review.

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