I was driving my XJ tonight and my temp was going up and then back down. I have coolant all over my driver side under the hood. I can not find a leak, my water pump appears to be good. Any idea to where I should start looking.

 

Check the upper and lower hoses.look for bulges, cracks or splits.

 

While driving it went from 210 to 240 ad check gauges light came on then went back to 225 and back a forth. Never overheated but hoses were hot. Got home and heard a strange noise. After parked turned back on to try to find coolant spray but never did and never went above 225.

 

Simple things, as Cheddar said - check for cracks/leaks/etc., but also your electric fan may not be working? Possibly hard to check at this point since it only turns on at a certain temp.

 

Sounds good ill check in morning. Any change I could also have bad tsat? Also I'm guessing it would be lower hose since all my coolant spray is on driver side.

 

Thanks for all input. It appears to be the most easy fix, the cap. I put new coolant in this morning and got it up to running temp and then the coolant started to come out from the cap. Only other odd thing I noticed was after this my lower hose was sucked in in the middle.

 

Supposed to be a spring inside the hose to prevent that...

 

Is it possible that a bad water pump would cause the coolant to leak out of cap?

 

No, you just had a bad cap.

 

It's worth checking the thermostat, sounds like it is starting to fail.

 

A couple years ago i put on a new radiator because the previous one was clogged up and at that time I put on a new thermostat.

I plan on doing the water pump and thermostat along with a new cap and flush the system out.

 

Thanks for all the help. Went ahead and put on new water pump, thermostat and housing, radiator cap and hoses. Below is a picture of my old water pump.

 

Replace the tube on the water pump too.

 

I did that as well and also replace the coolant temp sensor.

 

Not true.

The original hoses from the factory had the spring in them, but they aren't necessary for normal operation. The spring was there for something having to do with the assembly process only. Most aftermarket hoses do not have the spring, and it isn't necessary to keep the hose open. If he has suction great enough to collapse the hose, there's an obstruction somewhere, and the spring is not going to help anyway.