Well…
The poor neglected Jeep has had a very small coolant leak since, basically, forever. Ironically, only a few weeks after I actually gave the cooling system a little care and feeding it got a lot less small. The engine ran totally dry and pegged the meter this morning while I was ferrying Landlady to the county road. Fortunately we got close enough that an athletic person could walk the rest of the way, and that part of the road is tame enough that she could come back to the Jeep in a townie car to get her stuff.
Meanwhile I determined that the leak, which appears to be coming from the radiator core, is minor enough that a refill would at least get me home. The second neighbor I called picked up, then more or less dropped what he was doing and came to rescue me. The first neighbor I called called back a few minutes later to see what he was missing.
So I’m home safe instead of fuming beside the road, and that’s why neighbors are important.
There are worse things that could be wrong with your car than a radiator. Amazon has them. Is there room to get to it without dismantling the entire engine room?
Amen! Hope it is a hose and not pinhole or cracked end caps on the radiator.
Depending on where the leak is JB weld steel stick might do the trick
https://www.amazon.com/J-B-Weld-8267-S-SteelStik-Reinforced/dp/B000786GLM/
Drain the system, rough up the spot w sandpaper, clean with acetone and apply per instructions.
Could possibly be a failure right at the business end of the lower hose but that feels like wishful thinking. There are little drips and pools all along the bottom of the radiator housing.
https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/jeep,2001,wrangler,4.0l+l6,1373723,cooling+system,radiator,2172
Note that the Liland is all aluminum, with no plastic tankage…
It’s nice to have a well knit group of neighbors that a guy can depend upon. I hope it’s a simple fix. Luck to you Joel.
Speaking of water, may we assume that you are still without running water? How are you making do? Your plan?
Yeah, about the only good thing about this amazingly drawn-out spell of lousy weather is that I don’t need to worry about my pipes freezing and breaking. There’s so little sun that the well pump has no power anyway so I’m just trucking in water and shitting in a bucket. This situation has gone on since the day after Christmas and looks like continuing until sometime in June. Seriously the weather has been so dreary dull depressing cold wet muddy awful that I’m just going with it. If this place ever remembers that it’s an arid desert I’ll go up the ridge and see if I can diagnose where the damned water went.
In addition to JB Weld, there’s a product called Seal All that will seal active leaks of all kinds including gasoline, hot antifreeze and muffler exhaust. It will bond to hoses and metal. I don’t leave home without both of them and they have gotten me home multiple times over many years.