My 89' had the "closed system"when I bought it.(used @ 4 yrs ago)I knew nothing about JEEPS,this being the 1st JEEP I have ever driven.
The cooling system to me looked like a plumbers nightmare.
Pressure bottle,various heater hoses,(11 or 12 hose clamps) running all over the engine compartment.
I had replaced all the hoses,the "pressure bottle",t stat,n even the oem style rad(no filler neck).The thing was constantly over heating no matter what I did
or which t stat I used.It was really starting to PMO big time.
I had read various posts about swapping out to the open system,so about the end of last August,I did the swap.Wish I'd done it sooner.It is easy and best of all it eleminates the pressure bottle.I now have 2 rad hoses,2 htr hosesgoing to the htr valve and 2 htr hoses going to the block.When I got through,I noticed that I had eleminated 12 htr hose clamps.When I finished,naturally I watched the temp guage more than I watched anything else.I have had no probs what so ever,but next summer will be the real trial.
But I don't think there will be any problems.If any body wants a list of what is needed,I would be able to e mail or PM a list of what is needed to do the swap.