The smart thing to do would be to cut my losses, list it honestly, and eat a huge chunk of dough. But my pride is making it difficult...doing that means the seller won by ripping me off and getting away with it.

I'm going to investigate a little more, hopefully (fingers and toes crossed) it's not as bad as it appears.

 

That ain't rust my friend. That is the result of someone mixing OAT and IAT antifreeze. Good luck.

 

Great. So what's the consequences of that? DOA? Or fixable?

 

Well it's definitely as bad as it appears, but I don't think it's terminal. My current XJ looked like that throughout the cooling system. I pulled everything (including the freeze plugs), flushed like hell, put in new everything and it's been running green for 6 months now. You can save it but it's going to take some work taking it all apart and cleaning it out.

 

Update: I was able to get the heater core clean already. I rigged a female garden hose fitting to the end of the upper hose and connected the garden hose.




I turned the hose spigot just a quarter turn and let the pressure build. Nothing came out of the lower nipple for several minutes, so I hit it full blast...pressure built again and the hoses swelled. Just as I was about to call it a lost cause the blockage popped! Water started running out of the lower nipple. I turned it off and had my daughter man the spigot so I could get a short video. I'll post it as soon as photobucket finishes processing it.

XJ_zpsr8wbltay.mp4

On to the radiator and block...

 

Well, this XJ certainly keeps me guessing. After thoroughly flushing the heater core I moved on to the block. I pulled the thermostat housing expecting to see more evidence of the devil's coolant mix. To my surprise, there was none. It looked completely normal. Here's the water opening in the head immediately after removing the thermostat housing but before flushing:



The thermostat didn't show any signs of the devil's mix, either:





So I started flushing the engine...again, no signs of the nasty coolant mix. In fact, what came out had very little color - as in, it appears there wasn't any coolant in the system at all, it was just straight water. Here's what came out of the engine:



I then moved on to flushing the radiator and the results were the same as the engine, just water with no signs of the devil's coolant mix.

 

Cascade is the stuff folks run through there. You'll definitely want to do that!

 

Cascade? The dish washing detergent?

 

Yep, can't remember if liquid or powder is the kind most folks use. I haven't done it myself (just a drain & fill when the pump went out) but seen tons of folks on both automotive and truck forums do it.

 

I think the main point is that it is automatic dishwasher detergent. It doesn't suds up like regular detergent.

 

That is correct. I have always used the powder kind, about 1/2 cup. Run engine for about 30 minutes,let cool and flush with plenty of water. The results will surprise you. The worst case I had was a S-10 Blazer that the Dexcool was mixed with something else. The heater core and the radiator were plugged up and that nasty brown mix had turned so acidic that it ate the intake gaskets. It actually ate through the metal thermostat housing. In that particular case it took several cascade washes to clean it BUT it did clean up.

 

I had an hour of free time this afternoon so I continued investigating the cooling system. I found more evidence of the death-cool mix...check this out, lol:





In addition to the slice and dice impeller, the gasket material was almost non-existent...I can't believe it wasn't leaking at all.

 

I see no problem with that ^^^.

 

That's really too bad about your ride, did you inspect it before purchase?

 

I did, but not thoroughly enough. I had never owned an XJ before but was aware of the overheating/0331 head problem before I started looking for them. I passed on several before buying this one.

The seller listed it as having an engine swap in the last year (a "70k mile take out engine" he called it) and it included a complete but never installed Rough Country 4.5" X series lift. He was asking $5000. He lived more than an hour away so we met at an agreed upon place about half way. I asked him to bring receipts for the engine swap, which he said wouldn't be a problem.

It looked good in person, the lift kit wasn't missing any pieces, the interior looked great, it didn't overheat on the test drive (didn't get on the freeway - my mistake) and the paperwork for the engine swap looked to be in order. I tried to check the engine code on the block, but a badly leaking valve cover gasket and the fading sun light made it impossible to read. I negotiated a price of $3500.

Literally the last words I said to him before handing him the cash was, "You promise me this thing won't overheat?" To which he said, "I promise." So we exchanged paper and I drove away in the XJ.

I made it about 10 miles on the freeway before the needle in the temp gauge buried itself at 260. It went from 210 to 260 almost instantly. I pulled over as soon as possible and turned it off. I called the seller...he didn't answer...and I knew immediately I had been ripped off. I tried calling him several more times while waiting for the XJ to cool down. Never got an answer. I limped home that night, having to stop once more to let the Jeep cool.

The next day I called the auto recycler listed on the receipt for the engine. I gave them all the info contained on the receipt. None of the info matched their standard invoicing system. The receipt was bogus. I wasn't surprised.

So here I am.