landoawd

You're right not to trust without verification. On another application, and intercooler performed worse than stock, and their oil cooler was overspec'd to the point the system never reached proper operating temp. It's monkeys and a typewriter creating Shakespeare.

Mishimoto

Hi everybody,

My name is Steve and I’m an automotive journalist with Mishimoto. My job here is to follow our product engineering process and write about it so that our customers can get an in-depth look at what we do and how we do it. I also work to help customers with issues they may be having with our products, so hopefully I can help and give some insight here as well.

First off, I’d like to apologize for the inconvenience these issues have caused you all and let you know that our customer service is committed to doing everything they can to help resolve any concerns or issues you have with our products. That being said, I encourage anybody who’s having issues with this radiator to contact customer service and fill out a warranty claim.

We are in the process of gathering data in order to isolate the cause of these failures. When filing a warranty claim, as jsmittyund03 said, customer service should ask you a series of questions about the vehicle and its use to help us do that.

At this time we don’t have enough data to determine the cause of the issues, which is why I encourage anybody who has had this issue to contact customer service. If you have our radiator installed and do not have an issue, please feel free to PM me as well. The more data, the better.

We suspect that the issue may lie within the tolerances of the radiator mounting points or with chassis flex, but we cannot be sure without more feedback from customers. If you filed a warranty claim or had this issue in the past, but were not asked about your vehicle, please PM me and I will gather that information as well.

We’re also looking for somebody in the Wilmington, Delaware area to let us borrow their 2015-2016 JK so that we can get an in-person look. This vehicle would preferably be close to stock to eliminate as many variables as possible. So, if you or anybody you know would like to help us get to the bottom of this issue and wouldn’t mind us borrowing your car for testing, please let me know.

Transparency in our engineering and manufacturing process is something we pride ourselves on, so I wanted to address this concern as well. Here at Mishimoto, we are a global corporation and our products are made in facilities around the world. Our headquarters is in Delaware, and we have offices in LA, the UK, Australia, and China.

While some of our manufacturing occurs in China – along with other high-quality companies such as Apple and many major automobile manufacturers, including Ford and GM; all of our research, design, and testing is done in our 27,000 square-foot engineering facility in Delaware, where I am currently sitting. That includes our radiator cores that are engineered and spec’d for each vehicle and each application. Everything from fin-pitch, to row-height, and core thickness is considered when engineering a radiator.

Our engineers, who work in that same facility, are a dedicated bunch who love their cars and trucks as much as they love creating products for your vehicles. In fact, just this week we had a Jeep XJ in to test fit a radiator. Jason, the engineer for the XJ project, also owns a YJ Wrangler that he often takes through the trails around his home in Maryland. Here’s a photo of Jason working on a Dodge Challenger that we had in a few weeks ago, and the view from his YJ on the trail:


One of my goals in life is to embarrass Jason at least once per post



Jason and our other engineers work tirelessly with our project managers and manufacturing team to make sure that we produce the highest quality products available. If anywhere along the development process we see something that doesn’t meet our strict quality standards, we make sure it’s corrected and test again and again until those standards are met. That process doesn’t end once a product is released either; we’re constantly evolving and improving upon our designs.

If you'd like to learn more about our engineering process, facility, and team, feel free to check out our Engineering Blog at https://engineering.mishimoto.com.

I hope this helps and if you have any questions definitely feel free to PM me or reply here.

Thanks!

-Steve

jsmittyund03

Mishi,

Thanks for contributing to the discussion. I'm going to be installing the warranty replacement today and will update the thread as things either go well or otherwise. Once again, as I have always said, the customer service has been top notch, I am just hoping the radiator quality reflects that high caliber customer service. Thanks again for your input.

Mishimoto

Of course! I hope this radiator meets your expectations; feel free to let me know if you have any more issues. I've also sent you a PM about possibly using your vehicle for testing, but if anybody else would like to volunteer their JK for testing please PM me!

Thanks again,

-Steve

landoawd

How do you account for the efficiency issues on other platforms, then? If it wasn't the manufacturing as I speculated, the design and testing become the weak links, which is even less reassuring.

I know not all of your products have issues, and that all manufacturing processes have tolerances and acceptable failure rates, but my experience in the past has been poor. I'd love to see things change, but this thread isn't a good barometer of a positive shift in course.

spicoli

It doesn't make sense to me that a vehicles' flex would be destroying these radiators if they are mounted with the same bushings and locations as OEM. OEM are not as thick and have plastic ends, but if you look at the design of those plastic ends they aren't designed to absorb flex.

I have had a Mishimoto radiator for 6months without any issues (so far and hope it stays that way), but when installing I was surprised at the fit, it was not as good as I have seen with other vehicles. I had to do a little creative manipulating to get air ducts to fit up right, etc.

As far as people discussing how hot the vehicle runs, etc I can only shed some light on the 3.6L motors. 2012+ engines run hot, they really use the engine fan to suck air thru that radiator. My JK basically runs at the same temp as it used to with OEM, but I definitely noticed the engine fan does not come on as often. Granted, I have not collected hard numbers to prove anything, just my observation with my jeep.

I had to replace my radiator because I was stupid (see below) and mud got between the engine fan and the radiator and smashed smashed smashed a ton of cooling fins on the engine side... so washing it out was not an option because the airflow was reduced by about 30%-50% from all the damaged fins. Incidentally, photos recovering my jeep has been used by a few companies like bulldog winches because they had a guy on that trip.

Mishimoto

Landoawd,

Thanks for the feedback! We do like to adopt a spirit of continual improvement at Mishimoto. This is, of course, only possible through feedback from our customers on how we can improve.

Could you point me to exactly which products you're referring to and the experiences you've had with them? There are a lot of factors that go into efficiency and, as you said, all manufacturing processes will have errors; but that's why we offer our lifetime warranty, to try and minimize the impact any manufacturing errors may have on our customers. That's also why we respond to threads like these, in order to identify recurring issues and to bring the highest possible value to our customers. Test conditions seldom cover the entire scope of real world use for any product, but we really are constantly looking for ways to improve our products. That improvement often takes time and the input of many customers and professionals.

We appreciate the discussion!

Thanks again,

-Steve

Mishimoto

Thanks for the response!

I don't want to hijack jsmittyund03's thread, but I want to answer as many questions as possible. While, as I said, we can't be sure what the cause of the failures is without more data, chassis flex or mounting tolerances may be a factor. The plastic end-tanks of a stock radiator, while they may seem very rigid, will flex and transfer impact forces in a much different way than aluminum and welds will. The key to solving the issue may be in redirecting those forces or absorbing them with different mounts or bushings. But, like I said, all of this is theory. Until we are able to bring in a vehicle to test with, we can only go so far.

I'd be very interested in seeing the modifications you had to make to fit the Mishimoto radiator, Spicoli; would you be able to send me any photos? I'd also be interested in how you use your JK and any modifications that have been done to it, along with the mileage and a few other questions that we ask those who file a warranty claim. If you wouldn't mind sending me a PM with that info, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks again,

-Steve

urmyboyblue

Super cool that Mishimoto is replying to the thread but I'm seeing similarities between canned responses on Powerstroke forums and here. This link here: Who is running Mishimoto radiators - Page 11 - Ford Powerstroke Diesel Forum Shows that Mishimoto is implying that either the rigidity of the vehicle or the flex of the vehicle is affecting the radiators. The radiators, in my opinion, should be built around the vehicle...not the vehicle built around the radiator. It seems like your last response acknowledges that different mounts may need to be designed which seems logical. As jedg says, the stock radiator keeps his 6.0 cool so not seeing the benefit other than it looking slick.

Mishimoto

Hi urmyboyblue,

I should clarify what I'm saying here: At the end of the day, we do not know for sure what's causing these issues with the JK radiator. Until we're able to test on a volunteer JK, the best that we can do to work towards a solution is to draw on past experiences with other vehicles, of which, the 6.4 Powerstroke is one. We've encountered a good number of vehicles in the past where chassis flex would have caused failures of our radiators; one great example is the 1994-95 Ford Mustang (https://www.mishimoto.com/ford-musta...tem-94-95.html) . For that vehicle, we created new stabilizers for mounting the radiator to isolate it from the chassis flex.

While chassis flex or mounting tolerances may be the cause of this issue, it may not be the cause at all. Right now all we can do is gather data and create theories to test when we do have a vehicle.

So, if you or anybody you know has a JK that they wouldn't mind lending to us for testing, it would greatly speed up the process of getting to the bottom of these issues. Of course, once we do get a test vehicle we will keep you all updated as to what we find, chassis flex or not

Thanks!

-Steve