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By: Terry L. Howe - 5/2003

The Jeep CJ radiator with the hoses switched. You can see the upper, lower, and heater return hose.

The transmission coolers in front of the radiator.

The original radiator in my CJ-6 was a two core radiator and it just wouldn't be enough radiator for the Chevy 350. The other problem with the radiator is the AMC engines have the hoses on the opposite sides from Chevy engines. A long time ago, I happened to buy a radiator from Tim Weldon that had the hoses reversed and it was time to use this radiator.

Unfortunately, there were a couple problems with the radiator. One problem was one of the brackets was broken off on the bottom and the other problem was I needed a return for my heater hose and the raidator did not have a provision for this. Normally, I'd just go to the radiator shop and get this taken care of, but I was a little low on dough, so I decided to give it a shot myself.

I got out my tourch, some solder I used for sweating copper pipe, and some flux. I put a bunch of flux on the bracket and heated it up with the tourch and melted the solder into it. I clamped the bracket to the radiator with some vice grips. It wasn't easy to get the bracket clamped on and so I had to use a lot of solder, but it is reattached. It is not pretty, but it should work.

The engine block didn't have a provision for a return for the heater hose. On the donor car, the heater hose returned to the main return hose or the radiator, I don't recall exactly. I went to the hardware store and purchased some 5/8" brass tube and cut a small section of it and soldered that on the top of the radiator. The results look excellent which surprised me. I used a stepper bit to drill a hole in the radiator.

I hooked up the heater hoses and searched my box of radiator hoses for the other hoses. I found a GM hose with number 15561135GBS that fit just great as the lower hose. I don't remember if this hose was out of the Fireturd or some other car.

I didn't have anything that worked for the top hose, so I went to the auto parts store with a tape measure and got them to let me in the hose department. I found a hose that was a little short, but would work for the upper hose. The hose was number E70957CS and it was a 1.25" hose with one side that was 1.5" which is what I needed.

In front of the radiator, I zip tied on some transmission coolers I had from another project and ran the hoses from them to the tank in the radiator. The radiator I bought happened to have a tank for cooling the automatic transmission. The tank and the two transmission coolers should provide plenty of cooling for the transmission.

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