dedsa60

working with a overheating problem...

Replaced radiator and thermostat. Fresh antifreeze, Made sure the electric is working. But I was making a hour drive yesterday and drove with the heat on to keep it from overheating. This is in Oklahoma and yesterday was brutal...but I would expect things to be different with the amount of work I have done

Any suggestions?

Fred/N0AZZ

Did you clean and flush the system including the heater core several times?


Water Pump, Fan Clutch and is the electric fan kicking in at the proper temp?

Turbo X_J

What year is this thing?
Was the cooling system full of mud/neglect?

InitialForce

Check your water pump and fan clutch. Water pump doesn't have to make noise or leak for it to be bad. This came out of my 01 at 163k miles.

dedsa60

Its a 2001 model. I haven't changed out the pump yet. Cleaned and flushed system. Thinking of flushing the heater core again today.

Yes, it was pretty ugly fluid when I drained it the first time. I bought it with 141000 on it. It was pretty neglected.

Fan clutch is kicking on at the right temp.

Firestorm500

If you are experiencing unexplained coolant loss too, even a little, your head is probably cracked.

All 2000-01 4.0s in XJs have the 0331 head, which has a known casting flaw from the factory.

99.9% of the time, when we see on this Forum someone posting about an overheating Cherokee from those years, the head will eventually be the culprit.

If that ends up being the case, the only way to fix it is to buy an aftermarket head from a vendor like Clearwater.

If the oil pressure is low, totally rebuild the short block too.

Crash_Course

Mine was so badly neglected that I was expecting to pull something similar out of it... Pump was surprisingly ok, but it had been replaced somewhat recently and the impeller was already on its way to looking like that.

Fred/N0AZZ

Good call on the head, this could have been caught early if the year had been in his profile and yr Cherokee.


Anytime you find a system abused like yours was its time to replace everything when you did the radiator, or, if head needs replaced do the rest of it now.