So I just bought this jeep last week with it needing the head gasket replaced. It ran when I bought it but coolant was in the oil, blowing out white smoke, and quickly overheating. I got the head gasket replaced but now it won't start. It is doing this thing where steam comes out of the breather on the valve cover. It even shot the breather off and it went flying like 15 feet away. It shot the dipstick out of the tube as well. Here is a video of me trying to start it. I have checked to make sure that it is getting spark from the distributor to the plugs. I haven't checked the plugs yet though. So it's got spark and obviously air! Now as for fuel, I can hear the fuel pump turn on. So I would say it is getting fuel. And it is because I have already checked a few things and because it is doing this steam thing that I am asking for help now. I have a pic of what the plugs look like and what came out of the breather once. here is a link to a video on youtube of my issue.

Oh by the way. I have a 1990 jeep Cherokee Laredo with the 4.0 and only 170k miles on it.

 

You need to pull the valve cover and take a look at what's going on in there. This doesn't make any sense at all.

Disconnect the distributor and crank the engine over. Does it sound like a normal crank with even, rhythmic pulses? Or does one (or more) out of every 6 sound higher pitched?

Also, you didn't link the video.

 

Thanks for responding. I didn't realize the link wasn't here. but here it is.

 

Did it run ever after the head gasket job?

My theory is: hole in a piston.

You definitely have no compression on one cylinder by the cranking sound.

Looks like that compression is going into the crank case and puffing out the valve cover breather. It's hard to imagine a head cracked bad enough for the compression to go right from chamber to valve cover that easy. Hence the piston theory.

 

Compression test. I'm betting that head gasket is all buggered up, timing is way off, plug wires in the wrong places (the chiltons diagram is wrong), and maybe broken rings or a hole in a piston.

 

I haven’t got it running since the head gasket replacement job. I actually did notice when I was replacing the head gasket that cylinder 3 is missing a small chunk out of the edge. I knew I’d be losing compression with this issue but I didn’t think it would cause any major problems.

Will it be able to run at all with this bad piston?

 

Well, thinking about my question. I decided it’s kind of a stupid question. And the answer is no. So now I need another motor. I don’t have the means to swap in a new motor by myself right now. So if I found a used motor, how much do y’all think a shop would charge to swap the motors for me?