While building my last jeep, I remember the difficulty of making the radiator fit. I believe I finally used a pinto radiator I had laying around and, fortunately, had a hood that allowed the radiator to sit just barely above the grille. With that experience in mind, I've been puzzling through how I wanted to deal with the radiator for a while.
This weekend I finally got to installing my radiator and tranny cooler. Selecting a radiator was the first challenge. I had planned to use the radiator from the CJ-5 I bought last year, but I couldn't make it fit (I ended up selling that radiator). Then I found a brand new $15 chev radiator that was pretty small off of craigslist. I purchased that radiator, but it turned out that wouldn't fit either. Finally, I broke down and purchased a 15" high and 26" wide Griffin Aluminum radiator from Doug Herbert (it was about $30 cheaper than Summit). That was the shortest radiator they sold and it fit perfect … well, almost perfectly as I had to cut into my cross member to make a little more room.
At the junkyard the other day I picked up some rubber radiator mounts (out of a Ford truck) that turned out to fit perfectly on the bottom of the radiator. For the top, I had to grind some rubber radiator mounts slightly to make them fit.
First, I cut the front cross member, making it a little slimmer. Next, I added bottom mounts to the right and left side of the frame. These will hold the bottom radiator mounts.
Once the mounts were in place, I built a framework (neither the radiator nor the cooler came with mounting plates) that would hold the tranny cooler and the radiator in place. I wanted the tranny cooler to rest in front of the radiator and be centered with the grille. I also wanted the tranny cooler and radiator to be easily removable, yet capable of enduring racing conditions.
To hold the radiator in place, I build a bracket that sits atop the radiator and can be bolted to the frame work on one side and then, if necessary, can use CJ-5 like rods to bolt from the cowl to the radiator bracket.
Here's everything together prior to painting it.
Here's everything together and painted.
Even got the Bling star just right on that valve cover! lol…Looks good
Mitch
LOL .. plenty of bling here — so much sun that it kept me from being able to take pictures of the completed underneath areas of the fenders.
looks nice, i didn’t even see this posted until now. i was looking for a 3 cross core for my 4.7 stroker xj. ended up having a all metal custom built local for about 325. i thought my electric fan went out cause wasn’t turning on, pretty cool runner. it only get warm enough with ac on and i live in redding,ca. it’s 110 right now at 6pm. anyway, your project looks like it’s coming along.
james
530.941.4399