longarmwj
New member
A good friend of mine bought a 1992 XJ....for 200 dollars. It ran (kinda) and drove (also kinda), but a little bit of work made it into a decent driving little rig. Well for the last month, it has been constantly overheating. We tested the entire cooling system and everything checked out okay. We washed out the radiator and flushed it out and still would not stop overheating. So he decided to try something. He took the hood off. Amazingly, the entire time the hood was off it didn’t overheat once. As soon as the hood went back on however, it started overheating again. So this gave me an idea. Hood louvers. He liked the idea but didn’t want to pay 200 dollars for an aftermarket set. That’s where my redneck side kicked in, and this is what I came up with.
Here is the hood before, by the end of this post it will be the amazing shade of rattle can black like the rest of the Jeep
And here is my solution. Yes, that is a household HVAC intake grate. Yes we got it from Home Depot. In this picture it isn’t mounted yet, obviously. What we did was we sat it on the hood to position it where he wanted it, and then lightly went over it with spray paint. What this did was outline not only where the bolt holes needed to go, but also give us an idea on where we needed to cut out for the actual opening.
Next, I drilled four holes for mounting. In addition to this, we mounted two more bolts on each side for a total of 8 bolts
Then, the hood came off, and we made a stand to do the actual cutting. The stand consisted of some old crates, and two old brake disks to elevate the hood off the wood. Like I said, this is redneck.
Now for the actual cutting. I opted to cut along the outer edge of the vents, leaving a good inch of room between the outermost edge of the vent cover and where the hole actually starts.
We now have a hole
After grinding down the edges and hitting it with some black paint to keep it from rusting, I drilled two additional holes on each side and secured it down with the bolts and nuts that we purchased. The ones on the back were not long enough due to the structural parts of the hood, so we are gonna grab some longer bolts and install those, but for now the 6 will hold it just fine.
The finished product
And back on the XJ
We went and drove it around for about 45 minutes. Not once did it overheat [emoji23].
Now obviously this isn’t a classy or refined fix, but again, it’s a 200 dollar Cherokee. It isn’t supposed to be sophisticated, it’s supposed to be funny and semi functional. I would never do this to any vehicle that was actually worth something lol.
Hopefully y’all find the same humor in this as me and my friend did, because we laughed our asses off at it for a solid hour. But I’m actually kind of impressed with myself that 1: I pulled it off and managed to make it look somewhat presentable, and 2: it works.
Sent from my iPhone using WAYALIFE mobile app
Here is the hood before, by the end of this post it will be the amazing shade of rattle can black like the rest of the Jeep
And here is my solution. Yes, that is a household HVAC intake grate. Yes we got it from Home Depot. In this picture it isn’t mounted yet, obviously. What we did was we sat it on the hood to position it where he wanted it, and then lightly went over it with spray paint. What this did was outline not only where the bolt holes needed to go, but also give us an idea on where we needed to cut out for the actual opening.
Next, I drilled four holes for mounting. In addition to this, we mounted two more bolts on each side for a total of 8 bolts
Then, the hood came off, and we made a stand to do the actual cutting. The stand consisted of some old crates, and two old brake disks to elevate the hood off the wood. Like I said, this is redneck.
Now for the actual cutting. I opted to cut along the outer edge of the vents, leaving a good inch of room between the outermost edge of the vent cover and where the hole actually starts.
We now have a hole
After grinding down the edges and hitting it with some black paint to keep it from rusting, I drilled two additional holes on each side and secured it down with the bolts and nuts that we purchased. The ones on the back were not long enough due to the structural parts of the hood, so we are gonna grab some longer bolts and install those, but for now the 6 will hold it just fine.
The finished product
And back on the XJ
We went and drove it around for about 45 minutes. Not once did it overheat [emoji23].
Now obviously this isn’t a classy or refined fix, but again, it’s a 200 dollar Cherokee. It isn’t supposed to be sophisticated, it’s supposed to be funny and semi functional. I would never do this to any vehicle that was actually worth something lol.
Hopefully y’all find the same humor in this as me and my friend did, because we laughed our asses off at it for a solid hour. But I’m actually kind of impressed with myself that 1: I pulled it off and managed to make it look somewhat presentable, and 2: it works.
Sent from my iPhone using WAYALIFE mobile app
Last edited:
