I'm Hopeing this is not a Head Gasket
 

Hi All .... A few years on my way to Brisbane I boiled the jeep a few times big time a thermostat died on me in the middle of no where once fixed all seemed ok and has been for years now recently I think the gasket might be starting to fail.....:o
Symptoms............
Cold....Start Engine....idle rough but after 30 secs it settles down to 750 rpm
a lot of condensation coming out the exhaust in fact there is a water stain in the exhaust pipe
Off we Go.... if you put your foot down too much its like the car is flooding its the same on petrol/lpg if you try to go too hard it flutters and sometimes pops back through the throttle body sometimes stalls...... once you get up to temp it behaves the exhaust pipe is Dry its just when its cold? my oil is not milky I cant figure it out my only theory is perhaps there is a small break that weeps when cold but as things heat up and expand ?
it seals ??... and then runs good
any ideas ?
_____ooooo
/__l_l_,\____\,___
l_---l_l__l---[ ]llllll[ ]
_.(o)_)__(o)_)--o-)_)

Just my two bobs Lulu


Every time any of my cars, or mates cars have blew some steam on first start up for a bit (when they've never did it previously), it's either been a cracked head or gasket.

Yours must be leaking coolant into a cylinder.

On a friends Patrol recently, it steamed for a long time in the morning. We took the engine pipe off and could see a coolant stream running down an exhaust outlet. Wasn't leaking into a cylinder. It had made it's own steam cloud machine out of the manifold.

PS. Get one of those chemical test kits that you check your coolant with. It will tell you if there's combustion gases mixed in the coolant.

Are you having to refill the cooling system?

How old are the oxy sensors? With those symptoms id start looking at those.

Are you getting bubbles in the radiator? Does pressure build in the cooling system when the engine is running & cold? Are you loosing coolant?

I had a similar problem with the daughters I6 WJ and I discovered after much troubleshooting the camshaft sensor drive was badly worn causing severe timing scatter, the result was lots of smoke at idle initial rough running occasional backfire through the intake and sometimes a 'fluffy' engine response. Gas milage around 15L/100km. Replaced the cam sensor drive and engine stopped smoking and again runs nice and crisp, no roughness or backfire and the gas milage improved to around 12.8L/100km.
Then on a recommendation of overseas jeep forum post I installed a new genuine mopar front O2 sensor and as expected performance did not change but gas milage improved to 11.3L/100km the best it has ever been.

The cam sensor drive was badly worn that is if you removed the sensor from the top of it, the inner shaft could easily be rocked from side to side with lots of freeplay. Now I know XJ's has had both distributers and cam sensor drives depending on years but cam timing scatter could be the cause of your problems.

All cars will steam out of the exhaust on first startup on cold mornings etc, the water condenses in the pipes and muffler when it cools.

I've had the problem you listed recently, however it started on a long trip back immediately after filling up, so it was dodgy fuel.
Where do you fill up? Are you losing coolant? Any crud on the bottom of the radiator cap? Does the system pressurise properly? Is it pushing coolant out of the overflow tank?

Sent from under my Grand Cherokee

I'm under the impression there's a lot more steam/condensate coming out than there use to be for Lulu, and it keeps coming out for a fair while.

I may have read it wrong, cos I'm super paranoid about this issue, after seeing it happen a few times lately. Could be a fluke, could be I'm just a http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...Fg5dTZTOERiZGs this time

Hopefully we get the prognosis