'97 Grand, 4.0 I6

I had a burst radiator tank in mid-August and had refilled with water in case I had another issue. Finally was forced to stop procrastinating last Sunday and drained the radiator through the draincock, then siphoned out the overflow tank and backflushed the overflow line. I refilled and didn't know about all the specific tricks. I only squished the rad hoses and didn't have the heat on.

The gauge went just over 210 really quick and when I drove around a bit it went halfway to 260, then jumped up there real quick. I stopped, sprayed water through the rad and noticed it was not boiling hot. I tried parking up an incline (the concrete under an overpass, pretty steep), it still got hot. I ended up removing the temp sending unit and filling until it ran out there. The engine temp behaved normally after that.

But the next morning, after the temp had dropped into the upper 20's, I learned on the way to work that my heat wasn't working. I tried working both heater hoses all the way down, both rad hoses, parked uphill, etc. Oh yeah, I started it and let it get to temp, with the heater on full, then shut it off to cool down a couple of times during the day. Didn't help. Tried again Tues. Nothing. Suffered the 11 mile drive back & forth with just slightly warm air with the fan on Low. Any higher and I got a windchill effect.

I'm off on Fridays so this morning I took the heater hoses off and blew compressed air through. About 6 to 8 ounces came out, after blowing both ways. "Now there's your problem!" Flushed both ways with the garden hose. Some rust flakes and brown liquid came out but no big chunks or anything that looked substantial enough to have blocked it. Blew the water out, then held each heater hose up and used a funnel to fill them 'til it ran out the other one, going both ways. It held a quart & a half or so, I didn't run very much out the far side. Now I have heat, at least after the first warm-up while idling. (knock on wood)