“Thar she blows!”
Today was a “must drive the Jeep” day. Due to some minor issues on my primary car, I had my dad take it into the dealer for some warranty repairs. So, with the daily driver out of commission, I had a perfect excuse (as if I needed one) to drive Ike to work today. With the slightly warmer weather and longer daylight hours, today was the first drive to work where I didn’t need lights and gloves to get to work in one place.
After work was done for the day, I decided to run to my sister’s house to pick her up for a little sibling time while I went to get a tank of gas. By the time I was pulling down her street, there was a loud noise coming from the engine compartment. The noise sounded a little like a grinding noise. Unfortunately, the noise didn’t stop when I did, so I knew it was something else. I turn off the engine and run to the front of the vehicle only to find steam and water shooting out of the passenger side of the hood.
After releasing the soaking hood catch, I lifted it to find a whistling radiator overflow vent with rusted water spewed all over the inside of my engine compartment, hood, fender, and wheel well. Apparently rusted water does not a good coolant make. With the increased outside temperature and the additional driving I did at the end of the day, I think it was just enough to put the cooling system past its ability to work efficiently. The real kicker is that I was just talking to a radiator guy today to get pricing for re-coring the radiator in preparation for re-doing the cooling system this weekend.
So now my next parts order which was going to include a few cooling parts and a few other parts has turned almost entirely to a new cooling system. The radiator will either be re-cored or it will be roded out(?), pressure tested, and repaired, a new thermostat will be installed with a new retainer and gaskets, and brand new radiator hoses will top it off. Hopefully all that will be enough to keep me running for a little while longer.