They have astoundingly tiny radiators. Why they don't overheat more often, I don't know. Consider hunting down a multi core radiator.
Brakes suck, and that's on their best day. Buy darn good pads and shoes, it'll help. But don't ever expect it to stop well, especially with a loaded trailer in back. You'll really want trailer brakes.
Beware of the rust. It can get remarkable, and tends to show up in critical areas, like spring and shock mounts, especially in the rear. Beware the ripping out of the hitch due to rust, I've seen it before.
They have a surprisingly nice ride on the road and highway, especially if you don't go silly with oversize mudder tires and such.
Airbags or helpers in the rear will help. They are softly sprung for a tow rig.
I did some studying this afternoon. Pretty sure the radiator is plugged up or at least partially blocked. It looks like a coolant incompatibility mess to me and appears to have nothing but water in it now. I'm going to flush the crap out of it and change the radiator. There is a 3 core all aluminum radiator available for not much more than a stock one. There is one on the way, as well as a thermostat.
The majority of the oil lead appears to be the transmission pan gasket. There is a gasket and filter on the way for it. The oil pan is also weeping some, but I'm going to let it slide for now.
I'm not going to mess with the brakes other than changing them. New calipers, rotors and severe duty pads are on the way.
While under it, I noticed the front drive shaft looks to be brand new. With the mention of rust in the above posts, I gave it a thorough going over. There is none to be found, and I mean none, zero, zilch. Makes me glad I live in the south.
It's been a bit of a rocky start with this one, but things are looking up.
Vigo
PowerDork
9/9/16 9:04 p.m.
Well, XJs are something you cant fully appreciate the beauty of UNTIL you've worked on them.
The heater core also gets clogged easily. There's not a valve or anything so it's always flowing through it.
If you notice not much heat in winter, you can take the water hose with low pressure to the input and output of it and flush it. Fairly simple to do now when you do the radiator. You do not want to do a core replacement if you can avoid it.
Good luck.
In reply to NoBrakesRacing:
Replacing the evaporator and heater core is a good way to kill a weekend.
I got our XJ so cheap because the previous owner had the diagnosis and quote for replacing a leaky evaporator core, they decided to sell instead of fixing it. It took me a bout a year before I finally worked up the nerve to tackle it.
The brakes must have changed on the XJ, because my '95 has pretty good brakes for a small SUV.
In reply to bigdaddylee82:
That's exactly why.
SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote:
The brakes must have changed on the XJ, because my '95 has pretty good brakes for a small SUV.
IIRC, the 95 and up have a stronger booster. Brakes are otherwise the same though. They're not the greatest design (especially the pad sliders for the fronts), but they work well enough with good pads. They're still acceptable on my ZJ (same brakes with 1100 lbs more Jeep to stop).
