Definitely. Stop leak is supposed to clog up leaks, but it clogs up everything else...and usually not the leak. Same with liquid head gasket 'fixer'.

It is scary to find it in a newly adopted vehicle.

 

I would temp check varius places. Both sides of thermo housing, top, middle, bottom of rad fins, water pump, all along head on plug side, along block, just about anywhere you can point a gun at.

 

good news folks!

pulled the auto zone temp sending unit, installed a napa sending unit and wallah!

tem is between 155 and 210. i ran it in the garage (door open of course, nose in) at 2k rpms for quite a while. temp when up to 235ish, the electric fan came on, temps dropped quickly to 210, and the electric fan shut off.

temps are actually a little low, but i attribute that to the 170 degree tstat. no biggie. no echeck or anything here, so id rather it run a touch cool. stays just under 210 light to light and dead between 155 (the first 1/4 mark) and 210 driving at 45 or so. on the highway, it runs cool at 160-156 ish.

it also heats up a lot more slowly. more normal.

ill put a correct tstat in soon.

this is all according to the gauge. i figure if its a little off, its still pretty good! and the electric fan cycle leads me to believe that its actually pretty accurate.

thanks for all the help everyone!

(i don't have a temp gun… and not sure i want to spend 45 bucks for one at this point either.)

 

If you have a 170' t-stat, you should be running pretty near 170' when it is warmed up.

I suspect you have more work to do, but it is good to hear that you can drive it again.

 

yeah, my temps go up and down. seems odd to me. when driving, they are about 160ish. when sitting they climb ever so slowly. heat works great. drive and runs perfect. temps just aren't steady.

suggestions?

 

I know that you should put a 195' tstat in it, but that may not be the actual problem. From what you've written about doing to it so far, it sounds like you got the bases covered so I don't know where you should go from here. The PO put a new pump in, you said, and that might have been due to a bad diagnosis and didn't fix the real problem. The PO might have loaded it up with stopleak and ruined the radiator and clogged up the block.

If one dose is good, than 10 doses is 10x better, right? Just throwing that out there...

 

when i flushed the system there wasn't much that came out. also, when i pilled the stat housing and i took a goo look into the engine block (as far as i could see) and it actually looked very clean. inside the hoses and in the radiator through the hoses looked clean as well.

out of curiosity…. is there a way to clean that stop leak all out? I'm actually seeing no traces of it at all at this point.

replacing the engine or something is not an option at this point.

 

If the radiator is clogged tight with it, you probably won't be able to get it out. It outta be a crime to sell that crap because it never works and just makes more problems.

If you still have issues, replace your radiator and check the fan clutch.

 

I've been through this, replacing everything but the radiator. That included heater hoses, upper and lower rad hoses, water pump, t-stat, reservoir bottle, fan clutch, and temp sender. When none of that made any appreciable difference, I pulled the radiator and flushed it, along with the block and heater core. There was a slight improvement but I noticed the temps were erratic, it would get really warm then cool off when the fan came on. When I drove on the highway the temps were fine but going up hills or the transition from freeway to surface streets would cause a spike in temps that the fans were having a hard time coping with. I finally bit the bullet and bought a new radiator. Never had another issue. I swear the needle never moves more than two hash marks from center in either direction when at operating temperature.

I cut my old rad open and found that the entire bottom half was a solid block of crap. This surprised me because it flushed great and the water coming out was crystal clear. Still, it was only 50% effective.

You've bought yourself some time but I strongly recommend you begin budgeting for a new radiator and a 195º t-stat. Replacing the rad isn't terribly difficult and they can be found for less than $100. Mine was $89 from Rock Auto, I think, and it's worked perfectly for two years.

 

As a general rule, heating up at idle but not on highway is a sign of worn mechanical fan clutch.
If temps fluctuates while driving steady or on highway, usually a coolant flow issue.

 

okay! this should be the final update.

yesterday i went and bought a radiator, fan clutch, serp belt and 195 stat. i installed them all over the course of about two hours (went pretty fast) and…

EDIT: see below.

 

okay… i lied… its till doing the same thing…kind of.

cruising around town, or at 65 mph its fine. now its heating up on the highway (70mph plus) and on acceleration. not enough for the electric fan to come on, but enough that its going up 15-20 degrees…

i bypassed the heater fore to rule it out, and if anything, with the heat on, the temp increase isn't quite as bad, though still there.

new items are as follow:

everything… tstat, water pump, radiator, thermostat housing, serp belt, fan clutch, act.

i read somewhere that a clogged cat can cause heating up on acceleration. my cat is pretty much original i think, with 200k on it. I'm going to cut it out and put it a test pipe (we don't have echeck in ohio)

any other suggestions?

heater core and hoses are all thats left to replace. hoses are all in good shape so i didn't replace them.

i removed the under hood blanket today as well. also the AC is shot, so when i did the radiator, i ditched all the AC parts minute the compressor which i plan to convert to an air compressor.

 

Sorry to hear that.
That leave two possibilities that I see.
Condenser fins clogged with debris/bugs restricting airflow. Was condenser removed?

Restricted coolant passages in engine block and/or head.
This can happen in these cast iron engine blocks even without stop-leak. Not sure how best to clean it out.
Engines covered in thick gunk/grease can also heat up.

The under hood blanket mainly protects the paint and clear coat of hood. It will eventually peel if blanket is left off. Another option is to use washers on hood hinges to 'space' rear edge of hood up 1/4" or so.

 

AC condensor is gone. its really only heats up under load. Thats whats leading me to the cat converter. also, the front of the cat gets A LOT hotter than the back of the cat indicating to me gasses are building up and not flowing freely through the cat. the cat appears to be very old. probably original to the jeep.

I'm planning to paint the hood in flat black grill paint anyways, and space up at the hinges

 

When I have had a clogged converter, power was greatly reduced and it sounded different.
There is a recall for 1996 (not sure what other years) catalytic converter, dealer replaces it for free and then is noted in the VIN report.