Is there such thing as a "good" performance aluminum radiator for the TJ?

Chris

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For those of you who don't know, I ordered one of the Magnum Powers supercharger kits a few weeks ago:

https://magnumpowers.com/product/ornare-et/

That thing puts out serious power. It makes the Boosted Tech and Sprintex units look like a complete joke.

Charles (the guy who builds these kits) was telling me that the only issue they've ever run into with them, is that in hotter climates like Texas and Arizona, they have had a few overheat.

He said that this was due to the fact that this supercharger kit utilizes a water to air aftercooler (and intercooler, but for a supercharger they are called aftercoolers). The heat exchanger to cool the charged air is placed in front of the A/C condenser, which as you know, is already in front of the radiator.

In addition, since the supercharger uses it's own independent drive pulley (that bolts on top of the crank pulley), the stock fan can no longer be used, and is replaced with an equivalent size SPAL electric fan.

He said he's never had any problem with his overheating in Oregon, but if I ever intend to travel somewhere hot, it would be a very good ideal to upgrade the radiator to a higher capacity, aluminum radiator.

Now normally I would be entirely against this, but I know these sorts of radiators do have their purpose in TJs. For instance, when you do a V8 swap, you always have to use some sort of aftermarket aluminum, high performance radiator.

I'm curious if anyone on here has any real world experience with performance aluminum radiators for the TJ, and if so, whether they have held up long term, or experienced issues? There's a lot of them out there, I just have no idea if any of them are any good.

Normally I would never stray from the stock radiator, but clearly my situation is different than most.
 
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Could you adapt the Novak swap radiator?

That was the first one I looked at. The issue is, it's meant for a V8 swap, and so I'm not sure if it positions the radiator hoses in entirely different locations. I may have to call Novak tomorrow and ask them. It's quite expensive compared to others (i.e. Mishmoto), but I can't imagine Novak would sell something of sub-par quality.
 
I’m running a Griffin full aluminum radiator. I’ve had it for at least five or six years now with no problems. It works as it should.
 
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That was the first one I looked at. The issue is, it's meant for a V8 swap, and so I'm not sure if it positions the radiator hoses in entirely different locations. I may have to call Novak tomorrow and ask them. It's quite expensive compared to others (i.e. Mishmoto), but I can't imagine Novak would sell something of sub-par quality.
If you gave me a new Mishimoto, I'd give it to someone I didn't like. Wizard cooling the same.
 
I’m running a Griffin full aluminum radiator. I’ve had it for at least five or six years now with no problems. It works as it should.

No kidding? Is it bigger or higher capacity than stock?
 
If you gave me a new Mishimoto, I'd give it to someone I didn't like. Wizard cooling the same.

I knew you felt that way about Mishimoto. To be honest, I'd heard the same from others as well, that those radiators are just complete crap, and dealing with their warranty department is next to impossible.
 
I’m running a Griffin full aluminum radiator. I’ve had it for at least five or six years now with no problems. It works as it should.

That one looks pretty good. I also see they have one with the radiator and electric fan combo.

@Chris what starting boost are you going to dial up on that supercharger? Very interested to see how it works for you. I see it comes with IC and bigger injectors, very nice! I'm guessing 5 PSI to start out then push up to 7 PSI if short term trims and AFR look good?
 
This might be the ticket:
https://genright.com/products/griffin-jeep-tj-lj-yj-radiator-w-fan.html

I have to imagine if GenRight is having success with that, it must be worthy. The fan shroud is a big bonus as well, since I know that helps cooling.

You have the world's shortest memory. Didn't we just have a discussion about aluminum and bumpers? Just because something has a fancy name on it, does not mean it is good, works, or is successful. Find someone who is running one before you get all giddy and spend more money.
 
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That one looks pretty good. I also see they have one with the radiator and electric fan combo.

@Chris what starting boost are you going to dial up on that supercharger? Very interested to see how it works for you. I see it comes with IC and bigger injectors, very nice! I'm guessing 5 PSI to start out then push up to 7 PSI if short term trims and AFR look good?

That one I linked to is the entire kit. Radiator, fan, shroud, etc. Looks really nice. I just spoke with Charles (the supercharger guy) and he said he has experience with Griffin, but not with TJ applications. He was saying that he's used their radiators on various other vehicles, and they build a very good product.

This kit runs 9-11 psi with the stock pulley. With a build engine you can turn it up to 25 psi. 9-11 psi is the max they recommend running on a stock 4.0 engine though, which makes sense.

I have a base tune from Josh Pearl (who tunes the 05-06 PCMs via HPTuner) as he has tuned a number of these MP Supercharger kits on TJs before). He said his baseline will get me going, then I can drive around with my wide band O2 sensor and data log with the HPTuner. He'll have me do that for a few weeks and every few days he will have me send him the data, and he'll tweak the tune until we get it 100% perfect.
 
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That one I linked to is the entire kit. Radiator, fan, shroud, etc. Looks really nice. I just spoke with Charles (the supercharger guy) and he said he has a lot of experience with Griffin, but not with TJ applications. He was saying that he's used their radiators on various muscle cars, and they build a very good product.

No, this one runs 9-11 psi with the stock pulley. With a build engine you can turn it up to 25 psi. 9-11 psi is the max they recommend running on a stock 4.0 engine though, which makes sense.

I have a base tune from Josh Pearl (who tunes the 05-06 PCMs via HPTuner) as he has tuned a number of these MP Supercharger kits on TJs before). He said his baseline will get me going, then I can drive around with my wide band O2 sensor and data log with the HPTuner. He'll have me do that for a few weeks and every few days he will have me send him the data, and he'll tweak the tune until we get it 100% perfect.

Sounds good, looking forward to seeing how it goes! It's great that the stock 4.0 has a relatively low compression ratio and is as strong as it is. But yeah, 9-11 PSI on a stock motor should be very impressive! At what point does the factory fuel pump stop keeping up? (I didn't see it in the kit)
 
I would say the issue with cooling is the electric fan and not radiator capacity.

The fan included is a 16" SPAL fan. Charles said the CFM on it is the same as what the stock fan on the 4.0 pushes.

He said if you mount the heat exchanger underneath the vehicle tucked up into the frame, it doesn't overheat at all. So this has me thinking that the overheating is actually caused by so many things being packed in front of the radiator... a heat exchanger AND A/C condenser, as oppose to just the latter. He agrees with that as well.

So one path I could take is mounting the heat exchanger underneath the vehicle.
 
9-11 psi is the max they recommend running on a stock 4.0 engine though, which makes sense.

Forgive my ignorance on boosting engines, but on the most basic level won't 9-11 psi of boost provide the same HP and torque increases regardless of what's delivering it?

To add back in some realism, the biggest change to that HP output is more or less parasitic draw from the type of supercharger.

To further complicate, how that boost gets applied can also effect how the vehicle handles.

But again, simply, whether it's a BT M90, Kenne Bell, or this Magnum, isn't the power output the same at the same PSI?
 
Sounds good, looking forward to seeing how it goes! It's great that the stock 4.0 has a relatively low compression ratio and is as strong as it is. But yeah, 9-11 PSI on a stock motor should be very impressive! At what point does the factory fuel pump stop keeping up? (I didn't see it in the kit)

He said the stock fuel pump is fine until you get upwards of 12 psi, and then it becomes an issue. The low compression is definitely in our favor for boost, yes. On any other modern engine, you wouldn't be able to run much psi with the typical 10+ compression.

It should be fun. I had the Boosted Tech supercharger on my old TJ and it was a hoot even with 6 psi. I can't imagine this thing with 9-11 psi.

The other big difference is that the water-to-air setup will provide a much cooler air, which is how this supercharger manages to be more effective than the other ones on the market.

What is perhaps most impressive, is that MP actually builds these kits themselves in house, it's not a repurposed supercharger unit like the Boosted Tech Eaton M90 for instance.
 
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But again, simply, whether it's a BT M90, Kenne Bell, or this Magnum, isn't the power output the same at the same PSI?

From what I understand, you have a few factors at play here:

1) Some superchargers are more efficient at a certain psi than others. When talking to Charles, he had mentioned that those Eaton M90s are nice, but they really aren't good beyond maybe 12 psi at most. Yes, they can push higher psi, they just don't do it as efficiently as some of the more expensive blows for instance (for instance, a twin screw Lysholm).

2) If you were to run that Eaton M90 at 11 psi, it's not going to give you the same power because the air it's pushing at that psi is going to be much hotter than it would be if you had an aftercooler and some sort of water to air setup (or methanol). The harder you run a supercharger (or turbo), the hotter it's going to run, and the hotter it runs, the hotter the air is going to be that you're pushing into the engine. This is why you will see much bigger gains on a forced induction system if you're doing something to cool down the charged air (i.e. intercooler, aftercooler, methanol, etc.). All things equal (Eaton M90 with a aftercooler and a MP with an aftercooler), that would be interesting to see.

So while my answer isn't as good as Charles answer would be, the gist of things is that 9 psi from a less efficient setup isn't going to be the same as 9 psi from a more efficient setup. Think of it like 9 psi hot air, vs 9 psi of much cooler air.

Charles can answer this in more detail, so I actually forwarded your question to him as well, since I'm curious too.

I don't profess to be a forced induction guru, I'm just going off the research I've done.
 
From what I understand, you have a few factors at play here:

1) Some superchargers are more efficient at a certain psi than others. When talking to Charles, he had mentioned that those Eaton M90s are nice, but they really aren't good beyond maybe 12 psi at most.

2) If you were to run that Eaton M90 at 11 psi, it's not going to give you the same power because the air it's pushing at that psi is going to be much hotter than it would be if you had an aftercooler and some sort of water to air setup (or methanol). The harder you run a supercharger (or turbo), the hotter it's going to run, and the hotter it runs, the hotter the air is going to be that you're pushing into the engine. This is why you will see much bigger gains on a forced induction system if you're doing something to cool down the charged air (i.e. intercooler, aftercooler, methanol, etc.).

So while my answer isn't as good as Charles answer would be, the gist of things is that 9 psi from a less efficient setup isn't going to be the same as 9 psi from a more efficient setup. Think of it like 9 psi hot air, vs 9 psi of much cooler air.

Charles can answer this in more detail, so I actually forwarded your question to him as well, since I'm curious too.

I don't profess to be a forced induction guru, I'm just going off the research I've done.

No worries. I'm also here to learn.

Iirc Banks was getting around 75HP gains with their turbo kit, and 100HP gains once they added in an intercooler. So on the simplest level, it does mean that cooler dense air does equal more power. (There is a lot I do not know about this claim from Banks, but I'm talking very generally here.)