Replacing The Jeep’s Radiator

While I was out running errands on Friday, I noticed a really strong odor of coolant coming from the Jeep. When I got home, I popped the hood and quickly slammed it down, along with letting some strong language slip. There was a crack across the top of the plastic part of the radiator that was hissing boiling coolant. That’s a catastrophic failure waiting to happen, as well as a trip to the burn ward if I happened to be eyeballing it when it let go. So, once my darling wife got home from work, we headed out to the local Car Quest store (actually a storefront attached to their regional distribution center) and picked up a new radiator and various other parts.

Mike came over this morning to give me a hand swapping it out. The entire job was pretty easy, though a little messy. The new radiator is now in, refilled, and burped. It’s still leaking, but I think that’s my fault for not replacing the radiator cap. I’m going to pick one up on Monday and see how things go from there.

Cracked Radiator

Here’s the top of the old radiator, you can see the crack running left to right on it.