Ok heres the story. 2001 XJ 4wd sport running fine 2 nights ago. Yesterday morn on the way to work suddenly starts running like garbage and smoking from the hood. Sweet smell. Engine dies completely. Thought maybe overheated, noticed coolant was very low, refilled, got it to retastart barely mad eit another 2 miles ... dead. Towed home.

when home looked under and saw the hose was hanging loose from the engine. Nothing else seemed off. Reattached it, and jeep will start now but idle is ridiculously rough. Not sure how far it'd make it. Sweet smell is gone as well. There's caking near where the hose was off.
Wtf is going on? I literally just did an engine rebuild less than 6 months ago. I can't figure out what happened. Thanks in advance


engine bay

A lot of build up

this was totally detached

 

Well when the hose comes loose all of your coolant goes bye bye. Sounds like you may have ran it for an extended time with no coolant in the block at all. This is going to take some more diagnosis. I'd start by pulling the plugs and doing a compression test, or even better sticking a borescope down the spark plug holes and checking out the cylinder walls.

 

I would also be concerned about a head gasket or cracked head. A compression test will likely tell you if this is the case. Borrow one from auto parts store for free it's easy to perform on an I6.

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Who rebuild the motor? If a shop did it I'd be on there *** for not tightening the radiator hose. They don't just fall off.

 

Just another reason why I prefer spring clamps over worm clamps .

 

I thought this too but there's no symptoms of blown head gasket outside of the poor engine performance.. no white exhaust smoke, leaking oil, oil dipstick is perfect and amber, no lights. Im really hoping this isn't it. :-(

 

I think it was a slow leak then completely fell off.. there was still coolat in the resivoir and under the radiater cap. Thx for the advice.

 

My question is what was the coolant temp gauge saying while this whole event was going on? I would think that losing that much coolant would throw a code and the gauge would show an overheat condition.

My only other concern is that by refilling the coolant and not properly burping the system - it may have overheated part the block and created a crack somewhere. I agree that you need to do a compression test and find out if there is any real damage. For what its worth I've seen guys drive their jeeps with no coolant for a few miles without any problems so definitely don't assume that your engine is toast without doing more testing!

 

When theres no coolant theres no heating from the coolant on the temp sensor just air surrounding it. I cant imagine that gives an accueate engine temp reading.

 

It was reading completely normal (210). It gave no indication anything was about to happen. even when everything started going to ****, the instrument cluster looks completely normal. I had compression issues before the rebuild, and had many engine codes and the gauges would go completely wack. that's why I am so lost, it came out of no where and even though I replaced the lower radiator hose, its still acting bad. going to try to get it tested tmrw. ha thanks for the positivity tho. really hoping no lasting damage was done, but honestly I have no idea what else it could be unless the coolant that spilled drowned some electrical component

 

Make sure to report back!
Too many threads end with the OP ghosting and leaving everybody wondering what happened in the end haha.

 

will do! Really hoping to not dish out a ton of $$ again (I have no engine experience) ..... but I suppose it's still less expensive than getting a new car. I got this jeep a few years ago from a couple of garage mechanics and every major issue I've had so far is from some aftermarket "fix" or modification they had done. And the rest .. well, i know just enough to be dangerous ....

 

It was a blown head gasket. Had to drop some g to take it to the machinist. As to why it happened ... still don't know. Very lame.