As if things couldn't get any worse 🤪

wayoflife

wayoflife

Administrator
Staff member
In spite of all the electrical gremlins we've been dealing with, our Jeep Gladiator was still drivable and so Cindy and I made the call to just make the 450 mile drive home and to deal with the problems there. And, just as we were about an hour away, this happened...
 
As mentioned, we were just an hour away and as luck would have it, we were traveling with our 392 as well.
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Needless to say, we parked our Gladiator, locked it up, drove home in the 392 and then came back to recover ourself 🤪
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With all the problems we've been having, I feel like I should be more bummed about things but I have to say, I'm feeling pretty damn lucky. Lucky none of this happened out in the middle of nowhere. Lucky that we almost made it home. Lucky that we had another Jeep with us to get us home and lucky that we had the means to get our Gladiator back there as well. :)
 
wayoflife said:
As mentioned, we were just an hour away and as luck would have it, we were traveling with our 392 as well.
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Needless to say, we parked our Gladiator, locked it up, drove home in the 392 and then came back to recover ourself 🤪
View attachment 417078

With all the problems we've been having, I feel like I should be more bummed about things but I have to say, I'm feeling pretty damn lucky. Lucky none of this happened out in the middle of nowhere. Lucky that we almost made it home. Lucky that we had another Jeep with us to get us home and lucky that we had the means to get our Gladiator back there as well. :)
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Fuck. This a sight I’ve been all too familiar with the last couple years. Hope you guys can get it squared away.
 
Damn that sucks. Luckily you were close enough to get it towed yourself back home. Hope you can find all these gremlins and get them fixed quickly.
 
NevadaJohnny said:
oh shit! Definitely lucky to be only an hour from home, as opposed to somewhere like Mina.
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Still added 3 hours to the typical 8 hour drive and made for a very long day but yes, could have been worse :)
jeeeep said:
that sucks but, now you have a few things identified to make it more off-road, high-speed driving awesome (y)
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Yeah, hoping I can make some adjustments to mitigate this from happening again.
OverlanderJK said:
Should have called AAA. 🤣
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:ROFLMAO: only if I wanted to still be out there.
Jsouder53 said:
Damn! Sorry to see that happened along with electrical issues. Time for an LT? Lol
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LOL
 
Mike Pierson said:
That sucks, sorry to see that, guys. Guessing you got it shut down in time before overheating?
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Well, I got it shut off before any major damage occurred but it got stupid hot. One minute, I was driving up a hill when Cindy calls out on the radio and asked if I just washed my windshield. When I said "no, why". She said her windshield got spotted with water and then all of a sudden, the temp gauge shot up and I got an overheating message on the EVIC. Happened way too fast but then, it always does.
JT@623 said:
Time to swap the 42’s are just more load than the little 3.6 could bear
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LOL - the 3.6L has been holding up surprisingly well, even with the 42s. I need to pull things apart but it looks like the upper radiator hose was rubbing on a PSC hose and if I could guess, that's where the failure occurred.
 
For those of you who are interested, here's a pic of the upper radiator inlet hose and where it failed.
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And, here's was caused it to fail. For the last 65,000 miles, the hose was making contact with one of the PSC hose clamps on top of the steering box.
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Before installing the replacement hose, I did make sure to rotate the PSC steering hoses outward as far as I could and made sure to rotate the hose clip downward. I also made sure to install the new radiator hose in a way that would put is as far away as possible from the PSC one. This should keep the two from coming in contact again.

That said, we're up and running again! :)
 
I should note that it most likely wasn't always making contact or at lease, not very much anyway. As you know, the steering box is attached to the frame and the radiator hose to the engine which sits on hydraulic motor mounts. As the Jeep bounces around, the engine moves up and down too and that would have cause the two to make contact. Over time, the contact probably caused the radiator hose to thin and bulge and that just made things worse until it failed.
 
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