2013 Jeep Wrangler Radiator TRQ RDA80396

What's up, guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the radiator on this 2015 Jeep Wrangler. If you need this part or other parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

Take this cover off. Just grab underneath, lift up, and slide it forward. And take a straight blade screwdriver and just loosen up these worm clamps. One right here, and then one right here on the throttle body. Going to take a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Take these two bolts out.

Just remove this hose right here. This is going to be loose. It's connect it right here. Slide it out there. Then there's a connector right here. We want to disconnect the connector. Slide this off. Take the cap off the radiator and then we want to drain the coolant. I'm going to raise the vehicle up. We're using a two post lift. If you're doing this at your house, you can use a jack and jack stands.

I'm going to pull this panel off. I'm just going to use this trim tool. Take all these retainers out. There's two clips on the inside that hold these brackets on that are similar to those ones. You just have to take those out as well. And just slide it down just like that. At this point we're going to get a drain bucket. We're going to open up the drain on the bottom of the radiator. It's right there, so place a drain bucket underneath there, and we can loosen this up right here.

I'm just going to use some needle nose pliers. Twist this. It's starting to move and starting to drip. That's good. There we go. Pull this top of the airbox off. Just pull this hose off first, right there, and then there's some clips. Unclip it, right there and right there. Pull this off. Pull the air filter off and set it aside. Just grab the airbox, the lower part, and lift up. It should pull out some tabs that hold it on the bottom. Make sure those little grommets stayed in there. And disconnect this hose right here. Just grab it and twist. Take this trim tool. There's a little clip right here. Push retainer. Push down and slide that retainer out. And we can grab the reservoir. Just slide it up and pull it up. Disconnect this connector right here, push down on the tab, and slide it off. Take a trim tool. We're going to pull these containers out just like that.

With those retainers out, slide this off, and slide that out of the way. I'm going to use a eight millimeter socket and a ratchet. I'm going to take this bolt out here and same on the other side over there. Now I can grab this fan assembly, just slide it up and pull it out. Use a trim tool. Just remove this wire that's clipped into the radiator. Slide it out. Sometimes they break like that. Don't worry about that. I'm going to disconnect the hoses and use this hose clamp tool. We actually sell this at 1aauto.com.

All right, and then squeeze it, grab the lower radiator hose and twist it off. Some of the coolant might be in the host still. Make sure your drain bucket's below it. Take the tool off this hose clamp. I'm going to do the same with this hose clamp over here. Now we're going to pull these clips out. There's three on this side and three on this side. We'll just use a trim tool to get underneath the clip. Do that. Do the the same with the other ones. With that loose up top, just grab with two hands and just pull straight-forward. Be careful--these little lights are still connected. All right, now remove this. I'm just going to take the whole socket out. It's a little bit easier to untwist that. There's a little lock there. You'd have to move the lock to disconnect the connector. Set those aside. Same with this side.

Took that off and here's your grille. All right, I want to take these two bolts out of this cooler. I'm going to use a 10 millimeter socket extension and a ratchet. Make sure you don't take this one off, because that goes to the cooler lines. Now, we want to take this bolt out on the other side of the cooler. This is a eight millimeter socket with a ratchet and an extension. Get that off and grab the cooler and just slide it forward a little bit. There's a bolt right here and one up here. I'm going to take those two top ones off first. I'm going to use an eight millimeter socket. Extension and ratchet. Might have to use a swivel when you get in here, it's a little bit tight. Pull that off.

There's two more bolts underneath here. It's kind of hard to get to. You get a small eight millimeter socket and a ratchet. We're going to go underneath here and if you can use an extension with a wobble head, you can probably get these off that way. Take these two out. So actually to gain access at that bolt, it's a little bit easier if you take a pry bar, pry up on this and slide this back, and you can access that bolt a lot easier. We're going to try it on this side as well. Ease it up. Just pry this back a little bit. I just have that access that bolt. There we go. Just get that on there, take this last bolt out on the front. There we go. That's loose.

All right, last is a bolt over here on the side. Just use a eight millimeter socket right here. Take this bolt out. All right, bolt's out. There's some wires right here, here's the retainer attached the radiator, so we got to take those off, just use a trim tool. Pop those out just like that. You just need to take these retainers out. Just use a trim tool. Get underneath here. There we go. Pop those out. Same on this side. Pop these out just like that. There's one more bolt I need to get. It's over on the side here that connects those cooler lines. Just use an eight millimeter socket, long extension and a ratchet.

Loosen that up to take that bolt off. Should be able to separate this. There's a clip that holds those lines on a little bit, so just push those to the side. Slide it up just like that. There you go. Here's the old radiator. Here's the new radiator from 1aauto.com. As you can see, the shape is the same, has the same connection points. The upper radiator hose connection at the top. It's the same, same brackets to hang it. Get yours 1aauto.com and you can do it yourself.

So I want to transfer over these rubber pieces. Just slide this off like this. It's going to go on the new one just like that. Same with the other side. Now we'll just take the radiator and slide it in position. This might be a little bit tricky. Hold the condenser out of the way a little bit. And I'm going to try to attach it to the condenser first. At least get it started. So we'll get this lined up. Take this bolt. Get this one started on top here. Now I'm going to get this one started as well just so everything's lined up when it goes back in. Those two are started. Just be careful not to stab the condenser with these lines. See if I can get the bottom one started. Get this out of the way. Just get this bottom bolt started. And same with this one. This one is probably the hard one. Hardest one to get to--not much room in there.

I'm going to use the ratchet wrench. All right, now that those four are in, I'm just going to snug this one up and then I'll snug the other three up. This one, this one, I'm going to have to use the ratchet wrench, just makes it a lot easier. While this is in this position, it's easier to install this condenser bracket bolt right here. Snug this bolt down.

All right, so now I want this to line up with where the bracket goes into the holes right there and right there. This cooler is going to have to get raised up a little bit, so now I'm going to take this cooler. Some of you may not have this cooler. This might be just specific models, so I'll get those bolts started right there. Those bolts were caged bolts, so they didn't come out. So just get those started. Take this bolt over here and get this one started. And before I tighten those down, I have to put that bracket on the lines down below. Just take this bracket. This is going to slide over on the side here. This just holds the lines in position.

Get that bracket lined up. Just take the bolt, get that started with my extension and a ratchet and an eight millimeter socket. We'll tighten this bolt up. If that bracket falls a little bit, just line it up again. All right, that's good. All right, so now I'll take an eight millimeter socket and tighten this one down. Then use a 10 millimeter socket and tighten these two bolts down. That's good. And these two flaps we need to secure these. Push the push-pins in right here. I'm going to put these bolts in here and then one on the other side up here. Got a 10 millimeter socket, extension and ratchet. Tighten these down. Tighten this one down as well.

Now I'm going to reconnect the hoses. Use the hose clamp tool. Squeeze the hose clamps, slide this one on, and put the hose clamp on. If this is badly rusted, then you're going to want to replace it. Can use a worm clamp. And same with the bottom one. All right, squeeze that one. And line this up. And release it, take the fan, slide this in position. There's some feet down below it slides into, make sure it's in those feet in both sides. That's good. We can put the bolts back in.

Take these bolts and get these started. Eight millimeter socket and a ratchet. Before I tighten that one down, I'll get the other one started. All right. Then I'm going to snug these down. All right, now we're going to connect this connector right here, lock it in place. We're going to line this grille up. First I'm going to put these lights back in, lock that in like that. Do the same with the other side. Or if you disconnected them at the connector, plug those back in. Line these tabs up on the bottom and just push this. Push pins--push them back in.

These covers can go over here. Just going to slide underneath there. Slide underneath there. Line these pushpins up and lock them in place. Take the coolant reservoir. There's a little tab that it's going to slide into on the backside right here. Just going to slide it on. Line up the hole where the fan shroud is. Line it up like that. Put this hose on the top of the radiator. We're just going to push this push retainer back in and lock it in place. All right, before I put this snorkel on, I want to add coolant, but I can access the bleeder. There's a bleeder actually on this thermostat housing right here. You can take a straight blade screwdriver to loosen it up.

Once you get it a little bit loose, you should be able to do it by hand. Loosen that up, and that's going to make bleeding the cooling system a little bit easier. Coolant's going to be able to go down into the radiator and then come through the engine and back up through the bleeder. All right, you're going to want to make sure you use the correct coolant for the vehicle. As I'm pouring this in, you can actually hear the air coming out of the bleeder. We want to add it once we start seeing coolant come out of there. Then we can close it up and there we go. Air Bubbles are coming out. It's pretty good, so close it up.

Take a screwdriver and just close it a little bit more. It's about where it was. It's good. I'll just take this airbox. I want to make sure those tabs line up with those grommets. We'll just push it down. Lock it in place. Take the air filter and put it on. Put on the upper airbox and install this hose. That lined up, and we can lock it in place.

Now we want to put this snorkel on. Connect this temperature intake temperature sensor. Lock it in place and get it in position. These two bolts right here. Let's get those lined up. As long as these are on properly, then I'll tighten these two down. Just use a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet. And then we'll slide this hose in position. This goes over to the coolant reservoir.

Going to tighten up these two worm clamps. Use a straight blade screwdriver, tighten them up. That's good. That's good. Take this engine cover and slide it into position. Push it down. Now we're going to reinstall this lower shield. Make sure you put the push-pins on the backside where these go on in the back and then these four in the front.

All right, with this all back together, I'm going to add some more coolant to this. Then I'm going to let the car run. We're going to run it for about 10 minutes, constantly monitoring the coolant level and making sure that it's not overflowing and constantly monitoring the coolant temperature on the vehicle. You do not want it to overheat. And once that's all set, I can shut the vehicle down for a while, let it cool down, recheck the level, and then take it for a road test.

All right, I'm just going to start the car up. So it is a good idea to put the heat on, and put it on hot and just constantly check it. Make sure that you actually get heat. If you're not getting heat, there's probably not enough coolant in the system, and just make sure you have enough coolant. All right, we also want to check this upper radiator hose. Be careful when you go to touch it. It might be hot. Right now, it's not too bad. So I know the thermostat hasn't opened yet. If that thermostat opens, it's going to be hot enough that you can't hold onto it for too long. But right now it's still not hot. I'm starting to feel it a little bit, but not yet.

All right, so the thermostat opened up. This hose is nice and hot, you can't touch it for too long. We let it run for about another five minutes. At this point, I'm just going to shut it off. I'm going to leave the funnel on and it's going to suck the rest of this coolant in and we'll just top it off a little bit more and it should be good to go.

All right, so now our engine is cooled down. The coolant has stabilized. I can put this plug in this funnel. We actually sell this funnel at 1aauto.com. Take this off, make sure it's nice and full right there at the radiator. I can take the cap. Remove the cap. And at this point you're going to want to check the overflow tank and make sure the levels up where it needs to be. Ours looks good. So we're good to go.

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