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#1 ·
Latest Updates: Well, I didn't ENTIRELY f*** it up...

Pictured: In fact, I only partially f***** it up.



The Wasteland Survival Guide: Engineering Greta

Prologue: The idea behind my thread is simply this: to provide an entertainingly-documented accounting of all the work that I'm doing...major, minor, repair, diagnostic, etc, etc. The title of the thread was chosen deliberately...it's not a "let me hold your hand" write-up; it's more of, well, a guide. I want it to be interesting, informative, funny, and useful. I want it to spark ideas and imagination in the minds of other Jeep drivers. I want people to read, to see, to learn, and - most importantly - to be inspired. I want these things because - to me - the Jeep is the four-wheeled backpack of my life. She's the keystone that makes Bilbo Baggins' famous tale - "There, and Back Again" - actually possible...and if getting there and coming back again isn't what a trip into the backcountry is all about, then I surely do not know what is. To those ends, I want people to learn from me and with me. Knowledge - more than any other tool - is the most crucial part of not only surviving the wasteland, but thriving in it.

With that said...

The Objective: Build a Jeep that will faultlessly handle whatever I feel like doing at the time.

The Difficulty: Are you kidding? This is me we're talking about. There's literally no telling what I'll be interested in doing from one moment to the next...so heaven forbid I make it easy on myself. If I had to predict a "mission requirement" for this Jeep, it would read something like this: "Be capable of crossing 2,000 miles of asphalt in relative comfort while carrying anything that the driver could possibly need should he or she A) decide to negotiate a rather technical trail at the end of the road, B) go on a zombie-killing rampage, or C) turn in an unanticipated direction simply to see what lies over the next hill...and, consequently, to return home again with little-to-no damage." Kind of makes "daily driver" seem a bit harder to do than normal, doesn't it?

The Limitations: Time and money, as always. Any problem can be solved with outright simplicity, provided that one applies both time and cash in liberal, slathering amounts. Well, I don't always have either of those...much less both at once. I won't say that I'm going to try to do this on a shoestring budget, but I certainly can't throw cash at problems.

The Expected End Result: Rather, where I think this is going to end up...

- Well-controlled 35's, which means upgraded steering, control links and brakes.
- Armored sections...wherever they're needed. Engine, t-case, rockers, approach and departure, a cage of some sort.
- Clearance...read "tummy tuck" when you see that word.
- Cool-running reliability...look for oil and power-steering coolers, louvers, and the like.
- Communication from the backcountry...a UHF/VHF setup.
- Survival/Recovery...anything that's needed to dig oneself out of trouble, should the Mission Requirement get compromised.
- Pointlessly Fun Extras: Hey, if you've got an M1919, why not strap it to the roll bar? :D

Be sure to look for the the following special comments and sections:

Valuable Information. These are bits and pieces of relevant knowledge that I've picked up during the build, and they contain a great variety of informative randomness on the topic at hand. These sections contain tips on installations or techniques, ideas on what I might have done differently had I known at the time, and thoughts relevant to the posts in that section. They're not full tech write-ups, and they aren't intended to be...they're simply helpful hints that will better enable you to survive the wasteland of Jeep ownership, modification and operation.

Summaries. These are exactly what they seem: summaries of my thoughts and opinions. They're written to be simple, short, to-the-point "final thoughts and afterthoughts" statements. Think of them as the bullet points that always seem to end each chapter in class textbooks, or the "if you don't remember anything else that I've said, then remember this" portion of the thread.

And last, but certainly not least...

Some Final Thoughts Before You Wander In: I encourage you to ask questions, make suggestions, insult me, and to critique my spelling and grammar...but above all, I encourage you to enjoy the thread. I encourage you to enjoy wrenching on your Jeep as much as I enjoy wrenching on mine, and I encourage you to have fun while you can...because life is short, and it's a wasteland out there.

:thumbsup:
 
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#2,643 ·
#2,647 ·
Surviving The Wasteland: The Inevitable Cracked Radiator Tank, Part 1

I'll always be the first one to say that when life gives you lemons you're best served by making trail rigs out of them. I'll also be the first one to say that Greta is far from lemony, but she does have 112,000 miles on the clock and with that kind of mileage something is going to go wrong, periodically. With that said...

Pop Quiz: Identify the problem in the following picture.

Pictured: Hmm...something's not right, here.



A: After leaving the hood up all night, an early season frost came to visit.
B: Beasley got crazy with the margarita salt.
C: Coolant hit the fan blades and was thrown all over the f****** place, whereupon it dried in terribly nonfascinating patterns.
D: Very Sincerely Yours is a lazy b**** and didn't clean up after the last beach trip.

Correct Answer: Usually B because Beasley is very, very sneaky, but in this case it's C...which is why I've been in a foul mood all day. If it was B I'd have probably been in a relatively good mood, because I truly hate a salted margarita. Come to think of it, I hate all margaritas...but not as much as I hate things breaking unexpectedly. Here's a better shot of the injury itself:

Pictured: Injection-molding fail.



That, My Pretties, is a textbook upper radiator tank crack...and if you drive a TJ with a stock cooling system it will happen to you someday. It is not a question of "if"...it is only a question of "when" and of what you will do as you are being faced with said eventuality. If you're me, you'll look dejectedly at your Jeep and say "I buy you so many pretty things, and this is how you show your appreciation?!?!" Then you'll start wondering how much a replacement radiator will cost...and then you'll start wondering if the crack can temporarily be patched up. Then you'll have a moment of inspiration where you say "Hey...this is the perfect time to test out a trail repair and see how long it can hold!"

So that's exactly what we're going to do. I can sort of afford to replace the radiator, but since I'm not planning on driving much in the next several days, why not try to seal up the crack in a manner that would reflect a trail repair? Since we've already admitted that this kind of breakage will occur at some point in everyone's off-roading career, I can see no reason to avoid partaking of some real-world testing with an "I had it in my handy-dandy TJ Toolkit" solution and then posting it for everyone's viewing pleasure. Before that's done, though, I want to take a minute to explain my problem-solving process.

Valuable Information: Fixing any given problem in the Wasteland is usually no more than going through three simple steps. Step 1 - Ascertain the problem. Step 2 - Take stock of the problem's impact on your current situation. Step 3 - Effect a workable resolution. If you can do that, you'll probably live through damn near anything. Be prepared in terms of gear, supplies, and - most importantly - mentality.

In our present scenario, the problem is obvious: there's a crack in the top tank of the radiator and the system has a lack of coolant...so that's Step 1 taken care of. If you're one of the slower kids in the class and skipped Step 2, read it again...especially the part that says "Take stock of the problem's impact on your current situation," which is pretty much the entirety of that particular step. So, what does this breakage mean for us at current? How does this cracked radiator impact us at this moment in time? Consider another picture of the damage, taken after 30 minutes of low-coolant-and-no-airflow idling.

Pictured: Looks the same as the first one, doesn't it?



That's right...nothing has gotten worse. There's no additional coolant shooting everywhere and that there's nothing exceptionally bad going on; she wasn't overheating and was otherwise acting perfectly normal, and this was after being driven for six or seven miles and then left running while parked. With these facts in mind our answer to the question posed by Step 2 - "What impact does the radiator breakage have at present?" - is this: the breakage has no immediate impact...the rig is still drivable, and if you can drive six miles and then let your rig idle without overheating, she'll likely get you home.

Now, will this be the case in every radiator failure? Certainly not...but if I was stuck somewhere far from civilization and didn't stop for a moment to say, "Okay, what's actually going on, here?" I would likely panic, and that would do nothing but cause a great wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the land. Panicking - or otherwise not addressing a breakdown's impact - doesn't get me any closer to fixing the breakage, or in this case simply driving myself out of trouble...and "driving myself out of trouble" is a very viable Step 3, which is the part where we effect a solution. To that end, I decided to get all of the dried coolant off of her and get a clearer look at what had happened. To do this, I did something that most people consider to be a sure-fire solution to hydrolocking/melting your engine: I sprayed it down with a hose while it was running.

Pictured: It's not the Wicked Witch, guys...she can stand some water hitting her. Now go wash your damned engine!



Once all of the white cruddiness was cleaned off, I let the engine continue to run and dry itself off, and once dry I checked the temperature - it was stable - and decided to push my luck by taking her out for another quick drive. Now when I say "another quick drive" I want you to understand that I didn't just mosey around the block; rather, I took the opportunity to scuff the glazing off of my brake pads. For anyone that's not familiar with that process, it essentially means that you drive the Jeep like you stole it and then took it to a f****** rally course. If you don't smell coolant, clutch, brake pad, hot oil and melted rubber you didn't do it correctly. The results?

Pictured: A slight bit of bubbling once the system pressurized on shutdown...



Pictured: ...and a perfectly normal temp gauge.



So, where does this leave us? Well, after having suffered a reasonably large coolant loss I drove about seven miles and then let the Jeep idle for the better part of an hour while still hot. I then took her out for another five-mile thrashing and at the end of it the radiator was still holding up and was still cooling the engine effectively. This tells me that the oh-so-common cracked upper tank is not the immediate I'm-going-to-die-alone-and-unloved-in-the-desert catastrophe that some suspect it to be; if the damage is not severe you may very well be able to drive yourself a significant distance with the wound still unrepaired...and being able to comfortably sit down and drive yourself out of trouble is a hell of a good solution, fellas. That's Step 3...game, set, match.

As I said, though, not all breaks are as benign as this one...so - since this radiator is dead, anyway - I'm next going to go through all the stuff I have on hand and see what I can do to make a repair, under the pretenses of not being able to drive away from the breakage. After I get the repair in place we're going to see just how much driving it can take before the radiator fails entirely...and after that we're probably going to rip the lower tank off of said extracted radiator and take a look at the transmission circuit to see whether or not it can be used for an on-board shower.

Should be fun. :thumbsup:

Stay tuned for the next installment, in which we attack the radiator with a Leatherman and we also see how long it takes people to realize that when you have an engine swap on the horizon, you don't need to invest in anything more than a stock-replacement radiator. Long live Muppet Labs.
 
#2,648 · (Edited)


That's right...nothing has gotten worse. There's no additional coolant shooting everywhere and that there's nothing exceptionally bad going on; she wasn't overheating and was otherwise acting perfectly normal, and this was after being driven for six or seven miles and then left running while parked. With these facts in mind our answer to the question posed by Step 2 - "What impact does the radiator breakage have at present?" - is this: the breakage has no immediate impact...the rig is still drivable, and if you can drive six miles and then let your rig idle without overheating, she'll likely get you home.

Now, will this be the case in every radiator failure? Certainly not...but if I was stuck somewhere far from civilization and didn't stop for a moment to say, "Okay, what's actually going on, here?" I would likely panic, and that would do nothing but cause a great wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the land. Panicking - or otherwise not addressing a breakdown's impact - doesn't get me any closer to fixing the breakage, or in this case simply driving myself out of trouble...and "driving myself out of trouble" is a very viable Step 3, which is the part where we effect a solution. To that end, I decided to get all of the dried coolant off of her and get a clearer look at what had happened. To do this, I did something that most people consider to be a sure-fire solution to hydrolocking/melting your engine: I sprayed it down with a hose while it was running.

So, where does this leave us? Well, after having suffered a reasonably large coolant loss I drove about seven miles and then let the Jeep idle for the better part of an hour while still hot. I then took her out for another five-mile thrashing and at the end of it the radiator was still holding up and was still cooling the engine effectively. This tells me that the oh-so-common cracked upper tank is not the immediate I'm-going-to-die-alone-and-unloved-in-the-desert catastrophe that some suspect it to be; if the damage is not severe you may very well be able to drive yourself a significant distance with the wound still unrepaired...and being able to comfortably sit down and drive yourself out of trouble is a hell of a good solution, fellas. That's Step 3...game, set, match.

As I said, though, not all breaks are as benign as this one...so - since this radiator is dead, anyway - I'm next going to go through all the stuff I have on hand and see what I can do to make a repair, under the pretenses of not being able to drive away from the breakage. After I get the repair in place we're going to see just how much driving it can take before the radiator fails entirely...and after that we're probably going to rip the lower tank off of said extracted radiator and take a look at the transmission circuit to see whether or not it can be used for an on-board shower.

Should be fun. :thumbsup:

Stay tuned for the next installment, in which we attack the radiator with a Leatherman and we also see how long it takes people to realize that when you have an engine swap on the horizon, you don't need to invest in anything more than a stock-replacement radiator. Long live Muppet Labs.


my radiator has had a leak at the top for over a year.

at some point, a shop topped off my coolant and i smelled it again for about a week.

then it went back to normal.

i still have yet to fix it, and i drove from Ga to virginia and back in the span of 16 hours last friday with no incident.
 
#2,649 ·
I know at some point in the near future I will need to replace my stock radiator . I have looked at the Mishimotos , Novaks and the like and have yet to make a decision . I am curious as to whether or not you will stick with a stocker .

And for the record I like my margarita glass with no salt full of dos sequis amber :D
 
#2,650 ·
I know at some point in the near future I will need to replace my stock radiator . I have looked at the Mishimotos , Novaks and the like and have yet to make a decision . I am curious as to whether or not you will stick with a stocker .

And for the record I like my margarita glass with no salt full of dos sequis amber :D
if i am relegated to a margarita, i replace the salt with sugar.

like a *****.
 
#2,654 ·
No triple sec!:highfive:

I tend to cheap it out (lazy a** mofo style) and fill the glass half with Kirkland Signature silver tequila and the rest with Jose Quervo lime mix. Salt only if it beckons.:cheers2:
 
#2,656 ·
misterpookie said:
whatchoo mean? :confused:
You roll with the rainbows and unicorns?

Comment fueled by Dos Equis.
 
#2,657 ·
nah. just don't care for margaritas. if i have to deal with one, i want to pretend it's lemonade.

also, i don't advocate drinking and horse-riding. :nono:
 
#2,660 ·
Holy cow, I really missed being off the normal beaten path!
There are no normal, beaten paths in the Wasteland.

Today's Jeeping: Working on a radiator fix...
 
#2,662 ·
Surviving The Wasteland: The Inevitable Cracked Radiator Tank, Part 2

A couple more days and a few more miles and Greta's still running...and not only is she running but she's doing it well within specification. Upon being reminded that most gauges in vehicles these days are dumbed down to the "as long as the needle is in the middle, everything is fine" point - thanks for that, Ryan - I decided to actually take an accurate reading of the coolant temperature at various points in the warm-up/run/idle/cool-down cycle. Normally, this is a pain in the a**, but having a cheap OBDII adapter and the Torque app on my phone made it somewhat easier. I can't take screenshots of the application, but here's the coolant temperature data that I recorded during a morning of driving:

Warm-Up: Ambient temperature to 211°F
Run/Cruise: 190°F to 211°F
Idle: 210°F
Cooling: 211°F to 226°F

These numbers correlated very closely to the gauge readout, except for the period where the temperature spikes after the engine is shut down and the coolant continues to absorb heat from the block. I'd guess that if the temp gauge is factory-retarded, the retardation is unfortunately on the hot side of the 210-mark...which is precisely where it needs to be anything but inaccurate. Regardless, the temps are basically what I expected, which means that a cracked top tank is still essentially functional although certainly not ideal; coolant could still be lost quite easily and that could mean the death of an engine if it gets bad enough. Thus, I'm moving ahead with the plan to attempt a trail-esque patch with nothing more than what I already had in the Jeep that might be useful.

Pictured: The sammich is only for morale, but the ketchup is actually pretty important.



Even though the picture is terrible - as are the rest, being taken at mid-day with a cell phone - you can see what I've dragged from under the oh-so-photogenic hard deck: some brake cleaner, a jug of water, the first aid kit, a roll of Gorilla tape, a couple of napkins and some J-B Weld. Lunch, naturally, was a separate purchase...but if I could install a sammich dispenser under that deck you can bet that I'd damn sure do it. For now, the order of the day is to get the crack sealed with that J-B Weld, so after a quick drive to get the top tank nice and hot to open the crack, the first step is to prep the surface by washing any newly-dried coolant off of the top of the radiator.

Pictured: Not too bad, though, for about a hundred miles of driving.



There's no point in getting everything sparkling clean just yet - we're still going to do some roughing-up of the plastic - so a napkin and some water are fine for now.

Pictured: A clean radiator is a happy radiator.



J-B Weld is a pretty good thing to have just lying around, as it's a great high-strength epoxy with a fantastic temperature rating - 550°F, to be exact - which means that it'll survive under-hood environments. It bonds to most anything but the strength and permanence of that bond is completely dependent on adequate surface prep. Since the plastic is so smooth I used the file on my Leatherman to give the entire area a thorough roughing-up; this will provide the epoxy with a much better surface to grab as it cures.

Pictured: Don't be shy with the abrasion...more is better.



When the abrading is done, soak a napkin with some brake cleaner and start swabbing the entire area. There's no reason to be shy...the brake cleaner will scour the plastic and soften it just a touch on the surface, and it'll get rid of any remaining grease, oil, or newly-arrived coolant.

Pictured: It'll also leave bits of napkin everywhere. We'll get those later.



Let's pause for a second to mention a crucial point: we're patching the radiator while hot because the plastic has expanded a little and the crack is therefore open. I suppose that one could do this repair while cold, but I'd rather the epoxy be worked into the break in order to seal it that much better. Thus, the timing is kind of crucial...you want the plastic to be hot and expanded, but you don't want the coolant to still be bubbling out as it gains heat from the engine; thus, you may have to re-soak the napkin and clean up a bit more weeping coolant over the next few minutes. This is a good time to finish your fries, because the next step is to start mixing up the J-B Weld...

Pictured: ...in a ketchup container. I told you it was important. Ignore the friendly spider.



While any sort of surface or container will work, this is what I had in the glove compartment at the time. To clean out the container I sloshed some water in it to remove the ketchup and then used some alcohol-based hand cleaner (from the Girly Things kit) and more water to get rid of the oily ketchup film that was left over. When it's clean, you can dump a LOT more epoxy in there than you think you need. To mix the epoxy I made a makeshift paddle from the folded-up cardboard of the container.

Pictured: This was barely enough, as it turned out. I repeat: mix more than you think you need.



Once the epoxy was reasonably mixed I gave it a minute or so to "set" while I placed a few strips of Gorilla tape around the cracked area; this ensured that I adequately covered the damage for a good distance in all directions and allowed the mixture to thicken just a touch before it was applied. The thickening really wasn't needed but some sort of physical demarcation was very, very helpful; the last thing you want to do is go through all this trouble and have one portion of the crack marginally covered.

Pictured: The tape also helps to contain the stuff, which WILL get everywhere regardless of how careful you are.



Once the mask was in place and the epoxy was mixed and there was no more coolant seeping out, I used an alcohol prep pad from the first aid kit to give the surface a final cleaning...

Pictured: We don't want to risk it getting an infection.



...and then I basically spooned the epoxy out and spread it across the masked area. Since there were taped edges, I was able to drag some of it back up from the sides and into the middle, where it would do the most good.

Pictured: It's like gray Nutella, only much more useful.



After the mixture was applied I pulled the tape back off and used the still-damp alcohol pad to clean up the few small dribbles that got away from me. Here's the finished patch.

Pictured: Even if it doesn't work, it looks pretty awesome.



Now that the patch is in place, we're going to give this a full twenty-four hour cure and see whether or not it holds up to additional driving. I want to emphasize, here, that this is NOT a real "repair" for a damaged radiator tank...it's just a potential way to minimize coolant losses while on the trail. The real goal of this project isn't to fix Greta's radiator - that'll happen by installing a new unit - but rather to elucidate a thought process and to demonstrate the scrounging-up of materials. The Wasteland may in fact be a wasteland, but that doesn't mean that it's devoid of resources; in this case, everything I needed to take a shot at this was already on-board...and that's an ideal scenario. Self-reliance, after all, is pretty much the only thing you can count on to get you through life.

:thumbsup:
 
#2,664 ·
Brilliant! One small question though, the epoxy was under the cap correct? Hard to tell from the pictures.
The epoxy extends from the center swell of the tank to the base of the filler neck, and across the entire width of the top. That's at least .5" from the crack in every direction.

Oops, just remembered you can add coolant in the expansion tank.
Correct.
 
#2,666 ·
Hey, I've seen people rebuild rusted out rims with JB Weld and it's held for months. This will probably hold as long as you need it to.
We're gonna find out, one way or another. I have no problems at all in sacrificing part of my rig in order to learn more about what will and will not work.
 
#2,668 ·
Add a 6" (or so) square of glass fibercloth to the repair kit...wrapped around the JB package?
I thought that something along those lines would come in useful, but I didn't have any with me in the Jeep. Drywall tape or window screening would have worked as well...basically, anything that could serve as a structural reinforcement; I had all kinds of that stuff ten feet away in the house, but using any of it would have defeated the purpose of the activity. I did have the mesh portion of a wire splint with me but it was too high-profile to use and would have taken a LOT more epoxy to fill and cover. A few pieces of screening or fiber mesh would be a great lightweight addition to a kit; good thinking on your part. :thumbsup:
 
#2,670 ·
I actually did the same thing with my old CJ's radiator. Apparently a radiator for a 1981 2.5L is hard to come by so I had to improvise. I did exactly what you did and it held up until I sold it years later. Great write up.
 
#2,672 ·
Surviving The Wasteland: The Inevitable Cracked Radiator Tank, Part 3

Pictured: How it held up.



Yep, it split...mostly because I didn't make the epoxy layer thick enough. However, it did hold up for a couple of days and over a hundred miles of driving; this tells me that it's a viable repair strategy even if it's not been executed in the best possible fashion as of yet. After seeing that it had split I took a grooving file and made a vertical cut through the epoxy and down to the surface of the radiator tank in order to check the thickness; it was probably a thin 1/16" or so, and - obviously - this is too thin. Slightly more worrisome than the thickness, though, was the fact that certain areas of the epoxy released from the plastic without an undue amount of persuasion on my part; a combination of chipping and scraping with a double-cut file had most of the stuff off in short order. As expected, though, the areas that held tighter were those that had been covered more thoroughly by my ad-hoc abrasion. So, we're going to try again with a few more pointers in mind:

- A better "roughing up" is required.
- The epoxy needs to be somewhere around 1/8" or so.
- The suggestion to use some sort of mesh matrix should be used, too.

Needless to say, I'm also adding a few items to the Repair Kit list...and if anyone has any further pointers, I'd be more than happy to hear them.
 
#2,674 ·
Needless to say, I'm also adding a few items to the Repair Kit list...
Will there be a "Oh, Yeah! I Forgot... Toolkit Update" post or will you make us thumb through this Godforsaken monstrocity of a thread to find it?:drool::rtft:

Or is this a separate kit entirely?
 
#2,673 ·
One of the things to keep in mind is that over time, the plasticizers in plastic leach out and through. it may be plenty rough enough, however the chemicals in the plastics wont allow it to bond. Also being as it was covered in antifreeze, the crack itself had coolant residue in it and that would cause it to not seal. See if you can score a small amount of a vinyl ester resin and try it again.
 
#2,677 ·
Not sure if this is feasable but how about some sort of plastic "filler". I have seen where woodworkers have taken saw dust and mixed it with wood glue to make a paste/woodfiller.

What about some sort of ABS plastic filings mixed with an epoxy that kind of gets forced into the crack as well as the fiberglas mesh and the JB Weld?
 
#2,682 ·
What about some sort of ABS plastic filings mixed with an epoxy that kind of gets forced into the crack as well as the fiberglas mesh and the JB Weld?
Another option would be to do a V cut in the crack like you do on stress fractures in fiberglass. You would be assured of getting product into the area.
^ That is a pretty neat option for the home garage, but I don't know about the waste land....;) ^
If you have an inverter in the rig it could be.
All excellent ideas. Now, the question becomes: "How do I formulate something like this into a repair that can be carried out in the middle of nowhere?"

Reinforcement of the repair, thickening of the epoxy and perhaps using a different type of epoxy that would have uses elsewhere...this is a solid plan. Someone has also questioned whether or not a solvent weld compound would function, and using the plastic filler rod is certainly a good way to go (I sort of wonder if you could do it with a nylon zip-tie and a torch) but it's largely dependent on taking up some precious cargo space with specialized repair equipment; that might be a nice option for a larger rig or if the same repair can be improvised from other materials. All of these notions are very helpful because the purpose of the exercise is to use whatever's on hand in order to formulate a better Repair Kit and hopefully to discover a solution that will last a few days and several hundred miles; the suggestion help to discover what needs to be on hand. If we were only concerned about a day's rock-crawling then the patch I already used would work, but since we're talking about the potential for multi-day overland travel a more durable solution is desirable. So keep those thoughts in mind and keep the suggestions coming!
 
#2,683 ·
Sundowner, I would try the Permatex the Right Stuff. I always keep a tube of it in the jeep because its resistant to just about everything, 1 minute cure time, and can withstand temperatures of -75 to 450 F with intermittent temperatures to 500f. One of the benefits to using a gasket sealer is that it will flex with the radiator. I think if you take the same meathod of prep and use it, you would have quicker and better results.
http://www.permatex.com/products/pr...x--the-right-stuff--gasket-maker-29208-detail
 
#2,684 ·
Sundowner, I would try the Permatex the Right Stuff. I always keep a tube of it in the jeep because its resistant to just about everything, 1 minute cure time, and can withstand temperatures of -75 to 450 F with intermittent temperatures to 500f. One of the benefits to using a gasket sealer is that it will flex with the radiator. I think if you take the same meathod of prep and use it, you would have quicker and better results.
I've put both that and Permatex's epoxies on the list of potential candidates. The only issue I have with a flexible repair is that it may very well allow the original crack to continue expanding.
 
#2,688 ·
You have much more patience than I do ! At this point the old radiator would be on the scrap pile and the new one would be installed . I know thats not the point of this exercise , but alas I would have snapped . On a more positive note I think I am getting a Shiner Bock Neon sign to bring home with me .
 
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