While building my last jeep, I remember the difficulty of making the radiator fit. I believe I finally used a pinto radiator I had laying around and, fortunately, had a hood that allowed the radiator to sit just barely above the grille. With that experience in mind, I've been puzzling through how I wanted to deal with the radiator for a while.
This weekend I finally got to installing my radiator and tranny cooler. Selecting a radiator was the first challenge. I had planned to use the radiator from the CJ-5 I bought last year, but I couldn't make it fit (I ended up selling that radiator). Then I found a brand new $15 chev radiator that was pretty small off of craigslist. I purchased that radiator, but it turned out that wouldn't fit either. Finally, I broke down and purchased a 15" high and 26" wide Griffin Aluminum radiator from Doug Herbert (it was about $30 cheaper than Summit). That was the shortest radiator they sold and it fit perfect … well, almost perfectly as I had to cut into my cross member to make a little more room.
