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I bought a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee and I love it. Mostly I use it for road trips and fairly heavy off-road use traveling to abandoned mines and ghost towns. The only issue I have is that the engine seems to effortlessly overwhelm the cooling system.
Example One... There's a long hill heading out of Crystal Springs on the Extraterrestrial Hwy (375). The Jeep pulls it seemingly effortlessly in 7th or 8th. But the temperature gauge gets hot quickly and goes almost up to the red zone, but it never crosses.
Example Two... A few weeks ago I drove from Death Valley Junction to Aguereberry Point. It is quite a climb and it was warm so I get the Jeep heating up a bit, but this time it heated up right up to the red even slowing significantly, but still never went over into the red. The more concerning part is that once I reached the top the weather was a lovely 75 degrees and despite a couple of hours of super easy driving around over small ups and downs, the system could never recover. It stayed really hot. When idling it would get terribly hot and once the needle hit the red mark (or very close) the fan would kick on and it would cool off, but then it would go off and heat up again. The whole time I was taking it super easy.
I did both of these trips with a 2005 Ford Expedition a few years back and, while it heated up a bit, I pushed it a lot harder up the hills and it never got even close to overheating. And it was working a heck of a lot harder than the Jeep to pull the hills too. Or at least it seemed to be.
Finally, I talked to somebody about the diesel heating up and was told that "Diesels really like heat. Don't worry about it unless the dashboard (not the gauge) says it is overheating." That sure doesn't seem right to me, but I've never had a diesel before.
It seems to me I either have a cooling system problem, there's a design flaw where the engine can outwork the cooling system, or Diesel engines can take a lot more heat that a gas engine and I just don't understand the principles of how they should be operating.
Any advice or insight?
THANKS ALL!!!
Example One... There's a long hill heading out of Crystal Springs on the Extraterrestrial Hwy (375). The Jeep pulls it seemingly effortlessly in 7th or 8th. But the temperature gauge gets hot quickly and goes almost up to the red zone, but it never crosses.
Example Two... A few weeks ago I drove from Death Valley Junction to Aguereberry Point. It is quite a climb and it was warm so I get the Jeep heating up a bit, but this time it heated up right up to the red even slowing significantly, but still never went over into the red. The more concerning part is that once I reached the top the weather was a lovely 75 degrees and despite a couple of hours of super easy driving around over small ups and downs, the system could never recover. It stayed really hot. When idling it would get terribly hot and once the needle hit the red mark (or very close) the fan would kick on and it would cool off, but then it would go off and heat up again. The whole time I was taking it super easy.
I did both of these trips with a 2005 Ford Expedition a few years back and, while it heated up a bit, I pushed it a lot harder up the hills and it never got even close to overheating. And it was working a heck of a lot harder than the Jeep to pull the hills too. Or at least it seemed to be.
Finally, I talked to somebody about the diesel heating up and was told that "Diesels really like heat. Don't worry about it unless the dashboard (not the gauge) says it is overheating." That sure doesn't seem right to me, but I've never had a diesel before.
It seems to me I either have a cooling system problem, there's a design flaw where the engine can outwork the cooling system, or Diesel engines can take a lot more heat that a gas engine and I just don't understand the principles of how they should be operating.
Any advice or insight?
THANKS ALL!!!
