Over the past few days, I've been researching alternatives to the OEM intercooler for the KJ CRD given that the OEM units are now discontinued. What has become apparent is that there are no particularly good alternatives out there: the main issue seems to be the thin core that Chrysler used. At 1" in thickness, it's far skinnier than anything else typically found in service, and thus not easy to find.
The good news: I
may have located a company that can build new intercoolers which would be a drop-in replacement for the OEM units, with aluminium tanks being a possibility. Nothing is confirmed at this point, largely because there are two things that I need:
- An undamaged (except for the usual crack) OEM intercooler. Anything that's been in a head-on collision or damaged once removed is unusable; it needs to be straight and complete, including the tanks.
- An idea of how many people would want one.
With respect to the first requirement, I need to get a stock intercooler to them so that they can take measurements, which is why I can't use one that's been through an accident. Sending them mine isn't an option since I can't take the KJ down for however long it takes for them to see what's doable, so I'd like to obtain a broken one as cheaply as possible to forward on to them.
As for the second requirement, I don't want to get ahead of myself on all of this, but assuming that they can successfully build them it will help with pricing if we can buy more than just one at a time. The good news is that they will retain all dimensions, etc. necessary to fabricate future intercoolers, so this isn't necessarily a one-shot deal.
We're at a point where this is another proprietary item that will fail and ultimately become responsible for taking more and more otherwise-usable CRDs off the road. And while there are no guarantees at this exact time that we can have drop-in replacements made, there is at least an opportunity at hand to find out. If we don't, well, we already know how things end.
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