[lupinsea]

Got the Jeep put back together Saturday afternoon.

It took a lot longer than it should have but I was going slow, doing bits of the work at a time, and had a lot of other stuff crop up that required attention before the Jeep.

The radiator fins are now completely cleaned out.

And the A/C, um "radiator" (or heat exchanger?) that is in front of the radiator got cleaned out too. Blasted that from the back with compressed air. Holy cow, talk about turning the inside of the garage into a dust cloud.

Ended up needing to modify the fan shroud slightly. I noticed the fan blades had scraped gouge marks in the plastic. After installing a 1" body lift and a 1" motor-mount lift several years ago it looks like clearances were closer than I had realized and the fan (at some point) bit into the plastic. Using the dremel tool I elongated the screw holes in the shroud about 1/4" to lower the fan slightly. It should do the trick, only needed a little adjustment and it still forms a tight seal on the radiator.

During some long test driving where I was trying to get the engine to warm up I just couldn't. Won't know for certain until summer but I think I took care of my cooling issue. Engine was running a tick below the 210 mark on the thermostat (it's technically supposed to be right at 210) where as before I was runnig a couple needle widths above the 2010 mark (220 - 225 degrees), even i the colder winter temps (ambient air temp this weekend was 45 - 50 deg.).