DeJkUnlimited
Caught the Bug
Back around Thanksgiving, I purchased a 2013 JK with approximately 71k on it. My oldest will be getting his license this summer and as a family we’ve really been enjoying the Jeep ownership experience. I’ve had my radar up for a nice used 2dr for a little while and at one of my accounts, I was offered a deal too good to pass up. Sport with hardtop, auto, power locks and windows. Only two things wrong with it. Little to no heat, and standing water in the rear storage area behind the seat. No concern about the water at all. And the heat I’d have time to figure out since it isn’t anyone’s current DD. Well a couple months later after reading up on known issues and finding time here and there to try things before diving into a heater core replacement here is what I’ve come up with. First thing I noticed was the heat would get lukewarm but for only minutes at a time. It would consistently go back and forth between lukewarm and cool with no drastic difference between passenger and driver side vents. Two items came up constantly online, blend door actuator and clogged/partially clogged heater core. The blend door actuator was inexpensive and easy enough to try first. I installed a new one a while back which didn’t seem to make a difference at all. A couple weeks after that I disconnected the heater hoses and hooked up a garden hose to try and backflush the core which also didn’t seem to work at all either. At this point, I’m thinking I’m gonna have to set aside some $ for a heater core replacement. I ordered one off of eBay inexpensively enough. But I was going back and forth between having a dealer do it and trying the shortcut where you cut part of the dash reinforcement behind the glove box which allows the heater core to come out in 30-40 mins. In a last ditch effort to avoid heater core replacement, I drained the radiator, installed Prestone flush and clean solution and reversed the heater hoses (with a 5/8” brass hose coupler and 2” length of hose). Fired up the engine and bingo, much improved heat and I mean night and day difference. I figured the hot fluid and closed system pressure busted up whatever was going on inside the heater core. Well yesterday I did a complete cooling system flush and refill with distilled water and MOPAR concentrate OAT coolant. I also switched the heater hoses back while the system was drained. After starting the engine and bring it back up to operating temperature, the heater still gets really hot like before but the temperature fluctuates quite a bit with RPMs. It’s fairly cool at idle but once I raise the RPMs to 1500 or more it’s gets noticeably hot all across the dash......so my question after this long winded post is what next? The only thing RPM related is the water pump so should I replace that? The only other thing I changed during the complete flush was putting the heater hoses back to the way they were. There are metal supply and return lines that run from the front of the engine over the right head and to the heater hoses at the fire wall. Perhaps one of the lines is partially clogged or restricted? I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. But I’m leaning towards a water pump. Thoughts?
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