Squeeling, overheating, fan clutch?

Today I went to Napa to pick up some adjustable air shocks, well I let me jeep run while I was in there and come out and check gauged light was on and the coolant temp was in the red zone! Turned it off let it sit, threw some snow on the exhaust and sizzle sizzle, then I remembered how much moving helps cool a vehicle so I took off home and went right back down to 200-210. I just replaced my water pump 2 months ago, but in the last few weeks Ive been hearing a squeeling thinking I was in need of a new serpentine belt, I noticed today it stopped after a while, it was intermittent at times also. Soo what do I start testing, fan clutch (how to), electric fan, etc. I did some searching and will keep it up.

solditforajeep said:

Today I went to Napa to pick up some adjustable air shocks, well I let me jeep run while I was in there and come out and check gauged light was on and the coolant temp was in the red zone! Turned it off let it sit, threw some snow on the exhaust and sizzle sizzle, then I remembered how much moving helps cool a vehicle so I took off home and went right back down to 200-210. I just replaced my water pump 2 months ago, but in the last few weeks Ive been hearing a squeeling thinking I was in need of a new serpentine belt, I noticed today it stopped after a while, it was intermittent at times also. Soo what do I start testing, fan clutch (how to), electric fan, etc. I did some searching and will keep it up.

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Snow on your exhaust manifold wtf!... thats an easy way to get a cracked one!! There already prone to cracking they dont need any help

Fan clutch is pretty cheap, and if you havent replaced it .. im betting thats the culprit. I would also replace the belt, and keep your current one for an emergency spare. The squealing could just be the belt needs to be tightened, but it could also be a bearing in the Alternator, or the idler pulley.

Sounds about like my over heating problem a while back. I replaced the water pump due to a lot of leaking coolant, about 2 months later I had a squealing in the front of the engine compartment--intermittent: noisy at ignition (fan just getting into motion) then quieting down once the fan was up to speed. I too thought it might have been a belt, or a messed up pulley. I checked my fan and sure enough, just by rotating and wiggling it, the fan clutch had given up. If you rotate the fan by hand you should feel no front to back (hood to trunk) play. In the event you do have play, replace the fan clutch pretty quickly--I drove on mine a little after I found the problem it gets exponentially worse. Super simple swap.

No expert here, could be a bunch of differnt things--but assuming that the noise is related to the over-heating (which might be a huge assumption); it sounds like a fan clutch could be the issue.

Ed

Thanks for the info. I'll check it out tomorrow at work, luckily I work at a body shop, still just a newbie though.