yoooo, this is my first post on this site, ive used it a lot to reference and decided to sign up.

i was drivin down this dirt road and this redwood tree jumped out and hit my jeeeppp.

it hit on the front driver side right on the corner and on the headlight.
the radiator has a mean leak, the fan is smashed into the radiator, and i cant drive more than like 10 mins without adding fluid.

my question is, with this kind of accident, what kind of things should i look out for when replacing the radiator? i need to bend the sheet metal frame back into place, the main frame (sorry for the non tech terms) isnt bent from what some guys at a couple different places told me.

... im just worried about my jeep, i want her to run smooth again.
her name is agnes btw.

thanks,
phil

replace the driver

good one yoooo

newbs and not searching first

and buddy there is already someone on here that named their cherokee agnes fyi

lulz. I agree.

I have a little bit of experience with this type of problem... My XJ looked like this the day I bought it, and had a major radiator leak:



The biggest problem that you're going to run into with replacing the radiator while wrecked is that there's not a whole lot of space in front of the 4.0 to begin with, and its even worse with torn rusty metal in the way.

If possible, I would start by trying to yank everything out. Pull off the header panel and the bumper, and see how bad everything really is. Mine looked a lot worse underneath than it really looked on top.

Once you have the header off, at least on mine, it wasn't hard to pull out the damage. But then again, I had access to a machine. If you don't have access to a machine to pull, your best bet is to get a sturdy chain and a sturdy tree.

Once you get everything pulled straight, it shouldn't be a big problem to replace the radiator. If you have a transmission cooler, I would be concerned about damage to it. It's on that side of the radiator, and so are the lines for it. I'd also be possibly concerned with damage to the ECU and the steering box. The steering box sits right behind the bumper support, and a tweak in the right spot could wreak havoc on your steering stability.

Redwoods can be sneaky that way... It probably waited patiently to get you for about 500 years! On a more serious note, sorry that happened. By the way, welcome to the forum!

ive had gaurd rails come come out and attack me... its pretty scary.

If u can't get a fancy puller thing I used a come along. Had to hook it to the 8100 john deer and my jeep to a light pull but it worked! My problem is punting deer off the road doing 75 MPH. But by 130am the next day I was up and driving agean thanks to my old lady helping.

ha... ha... yeah replace the driver, hardy har. but thanks for the advice to those of you who gave advice. i had my friend pull me with some 400lb test rope and bend it back to were i can (hopefully) remove AND REPLACE the old radiator. when we bent the front back mostly to where it was the fan was free from the radiator and i was able to bend the bent fan blade back so now its not hitting anything when it turns.

had to break apart my crusty old shroud too...

im gettin a new radiator today in about 3 hours and ill let yall know how it turns out

oh and btw, who else has an agnes?

found the other agnes lol

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f46/pr...ah-lady-61108/

I'm sure if we all named our trucks we'd have several with the same name. Don't feel bad.

Damn tricky trees.

thanks for all the support
and thanks for the welcome to this site.

i went to pick up my new radiator and they ordered the wrong one.... i had to reorder and im gonna pick it up tomorrow morning hopefully.

will someone please help me n tell me how to do the quote thing? the quote button at the bottom of the reply box doesnt work

thanks
phil

Dont name your xj Agnes as you can see they are both wrecked.lol