jfharlow4530

So a few months ago my wife was driving her 98 cherokee classic 4x4 4.0 down the highway and a woman flagged her down and said her jeep was smoking like crazy. She called me and I told her to nurse it home and if it smoked too bad to pull it over. Well she said it ran fine and did not smoke again. When she got home I checked her radiator fluid and oil for signs of a blown head gasket and all was good, rad fluid was old so I went ahead and drained and replaced. I kinda just chalked it up as her not knowing much about the jeep. Well about 2 weeks ago it did it with me in the jeep. I had been driving it for about 2 hours and all of a sudden I looked back and couldn't see out of the back glass it was so bad. I immediately pulled over to see what was wrong and to see if I could smell the smoke and determine what is was. Between the time it started smoking and I pulled over was probably 15 seconds yet when I got out to smell it, the smoke was gone. I cranked the jeep to see if it would smoke some more but nothing, not even water out the tail pipe. Its driving me nuts not knowing if its major or not. If anyone has experienced this or knows what it is, let me know because I'm clueless as to what it is

to sum it up,
Random white smoke that lasts only a few seconds but is very dense
No oil in fluids or water in oil
not overheating

My Guess is that since both times the AC was on, could the AC compressor be freezing up and the ice dropping off onto the exaust?

bossenator

Mine did that and the tranny overheated and came out the top of the tranny from like an over heating spout, I let it sit and never did it again, just a suggestion, could be other things

tjwalker

Check levels of ALL fluids. Any of them down?

This does not sound like anything related to airconditioning. Ice or water on exhaust shouldn't create that kind of a smoke storm.

But there is a technical service bulletin for the AC system freezing up for your year XJ. A redesigned switch takes care of it. If the system is freezing up, you'll know it as the cold air just goes away until it thaws out, then works fine until it freezes up again.

jfharlow4530

all fluids look fine, but I do know that the AC is freezing up if it runs for a while, it'll start blowing out a fog like from your freezer so I know to cut off, cut the fan on for a minute or two then cut it back on and its back to normal. the owner before us was too cheap to get the ac ***** fixed so he just wired a toggle switch directly to the AC compressor to turn the ac on and off (wife has left it on a few times and ran the battery dead)