I do not even know where to begin, its been that kinda week. Last weekend my 2001 XJ gave me a slight heart attack when the temperature on the dash board shot up into the yellow spot for about ten seconds then went right back down. So I didn't give it a second thought and went about my merry way seeing as how it gave no other indications of anything being wrong. Then I head off to work Monday morning and I am just about a mile or so away and it starts overheating. So I limped her the last mile to work and she was a wreck. When I was pulling into the parking area at work she was idling super high, 3500 plus which I do not know how to make sense of and there was heaps of smoke or white gaseous stuff, not sure how to accurately describe it, could have been steam I suppose? Anyways after letting it sit all day while I was working I turn it over to see if she will start and she fires up and is letting out quite a lot of white smoke out of the tailpipe. So I nurse her up to a shop around the corner. Maybe a three minute drive up the road and leave her with them over night. They called today and told me it was definitely the head gasket. No biggie I've known that jeeps and head gaskets never seem to get along. So I will have her towed home tomorrow while I'm at work and school and will start taking her apart on thursday.
My plan is to remove the head and get it checked out at a machine shop, still need to call around and find one. I will install a new head gasket and all the fun stuff that goes along with that and hope it all works out.
My main concern is the super high idling when I got to work, i've tried to read a lot of the other posts' here about overheating and so far none of them have mentioned this. Any insights? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

heat soak coulda damaged a sensor like TPS or IAC?

 

That makes sense. Hopefully somebody else can chime in and add their two cents. It'll be towed home tomorrow and I can take a better look at it for myself. I routinely check the oil and coolant every week, never noticed any problems. The oil always looked good and coolant was green. Do these things just happen out of nowhere or is there something that I've missed?

 

I guess there where heads that tended to crack in the middle. Even read about seeing a line of coolant looking down through the oil filler. Anyway, hope you have a "TUPY"!

Btw.....If the temp or iol warning comes on. STOP!


I found this:


# @ Drivers side top edge

The heads that had trouble were the early #0331 heads (1999-2001WJ/TJ, 2000-2001XJ) before they were revised in late 2001 (revised heads have the "TUPY" foundry mark.)

1998 will have the #0630 head, which is typically subject to uncommon individual defects rather than a class-affecting problem.