Hey, folks. We own a 2005 Grand Cherokee Laredo with the 4.7L. Bough it about a month ago from CarMax. My wife said she smelled something weird while driving today, so I took it for a spin. Smelled nothing. Seemed to be running ok. Maybe a little rough, but it has 57K miles on it, so it's not going to be perfectly smooth.

Popped the hood and found this in the crevices of the air filter housing:



I thought at first it was coolant, but the coolant in the resevoir is orange, and this stuff tasted bitter/sharp, not sweet like coolant should. I checked inside the air filter box and it had not gotten in, and I didn't see any on the rest of the engine bay.

Any ideas? Maybe CarMax changed the coolant when they reconditioned it and this is left over from then?

 

When it's cold see what the coolant in the rad. looks like. Some idiot might have have topped it off with the wrong stuff and if so it'll have to be changed. I'd take it back.

 

Straight coolant really doesn't evaporate, so any spilled and trapped in a spot like that will be there for a long time.

Clean it up and don't sweat it... Carmax has a decent warranty (I've done a lot of work for them at MOPAR dealerships).


Modern coolant has a "bittering agent" added to make it less appetizing for critters to drink.

 

Yeah but if they added green in the rad and the system had orange, as evidenced by the orange in the overflow, then they screwed up. The two are not supposed to be mixed.

 

I second that. especially if you didn't know if the cooling system was flushed out. mixing the coolants can lead to less corrosive protection on the inside of your radiator and engine block

MS-9769 type (or better) coolant , even hoat coolant. if you can find it.

 

Thanks, all. The Jeep goes back in on TUesday for them to check this out, fix the CD player (which eats CDs...maybe the green fluid is CD blood), and make sure the front brakes are cool, since they're squeaking.

I suspect they flushed the rad and replaced the green with orange, but we'll see.

 

Well, they couldn't figure out WTF it was. They did a complete pressure check and found no leaks. They checked all the fluids -- none are green. So they're baffled. They saw the fluid -- it was there when I brought it in. SO it's all cleaned up and we'll see if it shows up again.

They did replace the factory Stereo/CD (eating CDs) with an Alpine that also has MP3 and USB capability and is bluetooth ready.

 

Well at least you got a new radio out of them for your trouble.