Jeep is running hot, what are the possible issues?

I assume you checked the coolant/antifreeze and it is good.

@WestRiverrat Yeah looks good from last time I checked, might give it another look never know.

Fan belt?

Leaks?

How old???

@WestRiverrat Not that I can tell if is leaking has to be small I’m sure I would have noticed. Fan seems to be good its moving. Only got one in the front.

Its a 95’ Jeep Cherokee love the little thing.

I had a Jeep Cherokee Laredo years ago, it always had overheating issues.
The coolant might be getting sucked into the manifold. Heh, not bad for a blonde
Lord, car issues, such a burden. lol

@Coloma Alright thanks look into it, if ya got anything else.

The Jeeps had fan problems, the one on the fan belt has a clutch, also the radiator can get clogged. The fan can be replaced with an electric fan and the radiator should have a “reverse flush”.

Flushing the radiator won’t be harmful if you do it right (and it’s pretty easy to do). You can buy a flush kit and antifreeze at any auto parts store. You’ll also need a garden hose and water supply.

What you’ll end up doing is cutting one of the heater core hoses and attaching a T fitting that you can connect to your garden hose hose. Connect the hose to a good water supply (like the hose bibb on a house, for example). Then open the petcock at the bottom of the radiator and turn on the water. The coolant will start to drain out of the radiator and onto the ground (treat that later), but as long as you’re running water from the hose, you’ll be continuously supplying cool water to the water jacket around the engine, the heater and radiator.

Just run the engine and let the water circulate and flush everything from the radiator until that water running on the ground is running clear. That lets you know that you’re done. Never run the engine if your water supply is turned off! It’s a good idea to keep the radiator cap off while you do this so that you can occasionally monitor the coolant level by sight.

Turn the engine off, close the petcock and let things cool. When the engine / radiator are cool to the touch, drain the radiator at least enough to add the correct amount of antifreeze to the system.

Don’t leave any puddles of drain water with antifreeze lying around The glycol antifreeze has a “sweet” taste that attracts animals, but is poisonous to them. Flushing and diluting it on the ground makes it relatively harmless. (This is all my recollection of the process from about 20 years ago, the last time I had to do it on an old pickup truck with about 150,000 miles on it.)

Water pump?
People often think the rad is the problem when in fact the water pump isn’t doing its job!

I had a 95 Jeep Cherokee Sport, which had an undersized radiator. We had to replace it with another one, but that doesn’t sound like your problem.
Is it overheating? Leaking water? How hot is it where you are?
Check that there is nothing in front of the radiator, like a paper or plastic bag.
If there is no leaking from the water pump, you probably don’t have to replace it.
Is the belt okay?
Take the old thermostat and put it in a small pot of boiling water. Does it open up?
There are 100 variables. Give me more information.

@CWOTUS I’ll consider it, I have a little tube tester for it and it was fine.

@filmfann It overheats. No leaks from what I can tell. It is not that hot to be causing issues I believe maybe 80 degrees out today?

There is nothing obvious like a plastic bag or such….Belts seem to be fine. Already changed thermostat along with the sensor.

Your antifreeze / water mix may be okay, but you may still have plugging of sections of the radiator due to accumulated rust (it’s just carbon steel, after all, and that metal does oxidize) or mud. (The first time I saw a radiator drained it was an ‘emergency’ flush, because the engine was quite overheated and it was easy enough to start with a simple “drain and flush” without cutting the heater core hose. That radiator started draining with… plops of mud for a minute or so before we started to get liquid draining free.)

@CWOTUS My thing is I can’t do where I am now. I’d probably get ticket if MPs came by, but there is a shop, can rent a bay $3 an hour around on post going to take there next best bet, try do a little more DIY work.

Take the old thermostat and put it in a small pot of boiling water. Does it open up?

The new thermostat may be bad as well. Don’t rule this out.

Today we ran a new thing of 50/50 into it and it seemed to make the difference. I never thought of it till now, but we did lose a bit of coolant when replacing thermostat we did put more at the time alas not enough. Didn’t think we had lost that much…..Need an oil change now as well now that I think of it haha.

The only thing that still bothers me a bit is when it is sitting running idle it climbs slowly up(maybe 5–10 mins?) to around 230–240 ish however once I start driving it even at say 10–15 mph or more it drops as low as 185, and rarely gets past the middle marker.

A guy from shop looked at it and suggested that the clutch fan be replaced as it is not spinning as fast it should at higher temps so that may be all it is,specially if it is idle and the fan doesn’t kick in better…. It works just not that good, but he said it really is not necessary.

Least I can run it now,but should I be overly concerned? Is the idle heating thing a big issue?

The idle overheat can be big issue if you get stuck in traffic. Go with an electric fan replacement.