Sooty Exhaust?

Was out camping with some buds and started the jeep to warm up this morning and someone pointed out a rather large sooty footprint my exhaust was making on the snow.

Is this normal or do I have something going on?

No codes other than the occasional cylinder 3 misfire 2000 xj's are known for.

bump?

Mine does this, too. The soot is unburned fuel from running rich. I have deposits of soot inside of my tailpipe, and when I start it up in the morning little chunks of soot come out. In my case, I'm running pretty rich due to a thermostat that runs too cool and a possible exhaust leak.

It is normal to run a little rich while warming up. If you don't have excessive soot build-up in your tailpipe, and if you don't have worse-than-normal gas mileage or a fuel smell from your exhaust after the engine has warmed up, then I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you have any of those symptoms then do a search for 'running rich' and you'll find lots of trouble shooting info and fixes.

-Robert