I bought a 89 xj for $800. Got it home and everything was going good. Then disaster came. It is overheating (230 degrees), water is leaking out of the back of the engine, rough idle, and radiator is staying cool. Just put in a new water pump, 195 thermostat, hoses, and flushed the system.

 

you have to pin point the leak, I hope it is not the back freeze plug.
how clear is the antifreeze, On what side is it leaking on driver or passanger.
If passanger check heater check valve they are plastic and break easy.
That is where your heater hoses connect to by heater.

 

You have a closed loop system in there (or at least should if its still stock) if its passenger side also check your pressure bottle/reserve it may have a crack in it, if there is no crack you may want to replace the cap on there with a Volvo pressure cap part number 703-1396, it's about $8 at napa and orilieys.

 

I found them three freeze plugs were leaking.

 

Pull the tranny or pull the engine.

 

If you overheated a few times you may just want to pull the head and do a head gasket. Doing this will cancel having to pull the motor, but you will still have to at least slide the tranny back to do the two or three back ones. Tip use brass plugs for replacement.

 

Since you are overheating and have a cool radiator, that is the real problem. The freeze plugs got pushed out because of the extreme pressure of the overheat.

I agree with an earlier poster in that it is probably a head and/or head gasket problem.

 

Might just be worth it to pull the engine and refresh it with new gaskets and freeze plugs all around.

 

He needs to find out why its overheating before he pulls it.

Gaskets and freeze plugs won't fix overheating.

 

going to pull the trany anyways have to replace it reverse gear is gone. stole the trany out of my other jeep. pulled the heads today everything looks good. there was a lot of burnt oil in the valve cover does anyone know what that is from. also the coolant is extremely rusted