Earlier this year we got our 2000 Cherokee Sport back from my oldest son. He'd had it for about 7 years.

It looked good (dirty inside and out but that cleans up) with only a few rusty paint chips to brush out (ever use on of those fiberglass pens? they work great to clean up a paint chip) and touch up.

I changed the oil/oil filter and bought all new radiator hoses, thermostat/gasket and the small heater hose (still need to buy a section of 5/8" hose since no one around seems to have he formed upper heater hose. Last Saturday the heater lost a lot of efficiency (still warm but temp ga. never came up to the usual 200 to 210 F point on the ga. Yesterday I drained the radiator and engine and replaced the radiator hoses, thermostat and antifreeze. I found why the engine was running cool (no check engine lights by the way but the gas mileage this tank full did drop a little to 18 mpg from the previous fill up of 19.5 mpg). The thermostat was in pieces. The spring, the back of thermostat and the piece that moves (open/close) were lying just inside the block where the thermostat had rusted till the back of it broke loose.

Now it works great (imagine that). I also drained the transfer case and put new ATF in it (that stuff was plain black, hard to tell it had ever been red.

Next catch up job will be draining the transmission and putting a new filter/gasket and fluid there. Then I'll feel much better about the old blue Cherokee.

 

since everyone yells at me about it, ill pass it on...

dont use regular atf you have to use dexron, Chrysler made an announcement about it after all there transmissions were blowin up from reg ATF

 

Keep an eye on the head, do a search for 2000-01 heads.

 

yeah, I typed ATF but my Camaros and truck all use Dexron so that's what I have on the shelf and that's what the manual said to use.

What drained out looked more black that red. Well used.