Cooling issues

1988 XJ 4.0. 88k miles. Stock. can you believe it? anyways had it at a muffler shop getting a new cat put on, he ended up "finding" a hole in my radiator, and it never leaked before... so i said okay he fixed it and it was done. and he put a new thermostat in for free..get it home, go to big bear for 3 days and come home to find every drop of antifreeze on my driveway.. still dripping out of the Draincok, so i go to 3 autoparts stores and none of the threads are right on the draincock, so i fill up the coolant bottle (closed loop) and run it thinking when it gets to 195 the coolant will flow, its on for about 2 mins and i check the temp and the guage is skyrocketing up and i stopped it at about 250. thermostat never opened... idk what to do! thermostat broken? water pump? thanks alot any advice welcome

Fill it up and run it with the cap off..Sounds like it has AIR in it..Needs to burp..You can do a search on burping rad..

Never trust a "free" thermostat ??? ....

i ran it with the cap off.. and i had the new thermostat he just put it in for free..

Needs to be burped..It is easy to do..I was lucky when i did mine i just ran it with the bottle filled to the top with the cap off and just kept topping it off till she stop needing water..

Can you explain real quick how to do that? all of the threads on that are extremely long and i dont want to look through them for the one little post about it haha. sorry for the laziness...

No problem..On the driverside of the head, you'll find the temp sending unit..You need to remove it so the air can escape..Make sure it isn't to hot cause you can get burned..Make sure your bottle is FULL and remove the cap..Watch to see if it burps..Did you remove the heater hoses when you changed the T-Stat?

K ill try that.. and idk that guy chanted the tstat for me.. =/