Been more than a year since I updated this and, unfortunately, it’s with bad news.
I had a crazy year last year. I put new siding on my house and garage, re-shingled the garage, sold my house, lived with my parents with my wife and twin 1 year olds for 3 months while we closed on our new house and moved into a new house. So, crazy year. The Jeep ran pretty well through all the work it did except it over heated once while pulling the trailer but didn’t do it after that.
Until Saturday.
I had a trailer full of stuff to take to the land fill, which is about 30 miles away from where I live. I drove it on up to the landfill and everything was purring like a kitten, I was excited. I get to the landfill and the smoke starts. Oh S#!t!! I hear the bubbling and pop the hood to see antifreeze gushing all over. Let it sit for about 10 minutes, she cooled down and I was able to fire it back up and drive it back to the area to drop the load in the trailer. I get it unloaded and then it wouldn’t start. Kept cranking and cranking and finally it fired up. I had no desire to get the Jeep stuck in a landfill. I get it back up to the weigh station, get it weighed (left it running this time) and we proceeded to the highway. As soon as I get up to highway speed she’s pegging out at 260. I drove about a mile and pulled over. We walked over to a gas station, bought a gallon of water and it took about a half gallon. Got her to start back up but, at this point, it was pretty clear that I had blown a head gasket as I had a check engine light on and barely enough power to move it. Any time I gave a little extra gas it’d just chug and almost die. I babied it all 30 miles back home (didn’t actually overheat the rest of the way) and now she’s parked back in the driveway.
So … now it’s time for a new engine, which I had been kind of planning on due to the overheat from last year but now it’s “official.” So, this should be an interesting year going from 2WD to 4WD and swapping out an engine.