Today marks day #2 for my very Jeep’s adventure. As you may recall, yesterday I picked up a brand-new-to-me Jeep Wrangler YJ. I drove it home on the back of a U-Haul car trailer, pressure washed it, and then parked it in my garage.
Day 2 now starts and ends with one simple task. When I bought the Jeep the seller told me that it overheats after about 20 minutes so that’s the focus of this post–solving the overheating issue.
Under the hood, while keeping in mind that most everything is tied down with some sort of homemade strap/zip tie/string/wire/other contraption and very little is actually mounted correctly, the parts related to the engine’s cooling systems look to be in pretty good condition (save for the air cleaner, but we’ll get to that later). The radiator looks almost new. It has no holes, no dents, and no impressions of any kind. From a visual inspection it should allow coolant to flow freely. I also checked the coolant level and it was almost full… or not low enough that would explain the overheating issue.
So on to the next obvious step, the thermostat. Given I’d have to remove it to inspect it and a new one is $10 I decided it’d be best to go ahead and replace it. After a couple of YouTube videos I had the confidence I knew where it was and how to swap it out. It took about 35 minutes, but I was able to unbolt, remove, replace, and reconnect everything.
Results:
- Installation = No leaks
- Overheating = Not yet (I ran it for 30 minutes and all I really learned was that the temperature gauge doesn’t appear to work, so a task for another day.)
More to come soon!