Coolant bottle Problem SOLVED......?

So a few months ago I found coolant on the ground after i returned to my jeep from a short drive to anywhere..
Found it was the cap leaking.. Replaced. Fixed.

Now, it's happened again.. Found the little cracks in the bottle have finally gone all the way though, and is leaking.. So, i read on here that old pontiacs have a good coolant bottle, with radiator cap(!)..

So i found the only pontiac that had a coolant setup like the XJ, and got the bottle.. While fumbling around looking for other things, i noticed it said "Volvo" on it... That's odd.

So i went to the volvo section, and there they where.. The little rectangle bottles that are attached about mid way in the engine compartment on the passenger side. It's a rugged bottle, nice cap, but still a closed system.. I decided to risk my $3 and try it out, with my old bottle in the back of the XJ just in case..

It's been 2 weeks, and no problems whatsoever.. The input line is a little small, but the hose clamped onto it okay. The output line is exactly the same as the XJ, so no problem there..

Just wanted to let everyone know, in case they are having trouble... Maybe this bottle will get you out of a jam.

I've considered ordering Quadratec's bottle, but why mess with a bad design? i'm gunna keep my eye out for the pontiac bottle with a real cap on it, to finally get an open system..

Let me know if i've not considered anything with the volvo bottle.. Seems to work Great. :yelclap:
-Nick

can i talk you out of a part number brand and parts house name you got it from?

I guess i didn't actually say it, but i found it in a pontiac in a junkyard.

Later i found a better one in a Volvo..

Check out the local boneyard.. It's obvious which one it is.. The setup is just like the XJ's..
-Nick

We installed a bottle from a late 80's VW Golf into my step brothers XJ and it has been fine for the past 3 years. It is a round bottle with a cap design far better than the stock XJ one. VW's have had the closed system for quite a while now so I would imagine you could pull a bottle off any of them. I know the bottle on my wife's 2000 VW Passat would work perfectly on the XJ. Get them from a yard as new ones are cost prohibitive.

I had a '92 Grand Am (2.3 4 cyl) that had the closed system with the plastic bottle. For a lot of other reasons the car is gone (though not quite dead from what I hear), but the coolant bottle was the only original part that remained of the cooling system and it did look like it was better built than the one on my XJ, with a much better looking pressure cap and sealing surface on the tank.

I would have reservations, though, about that upper inlet nipple. It is considerably smaller than the standard heater hose sized one on the XJ, and pinching a regular sized hose down onto it is bound to weaken the hose some. If you look at the way the Pontiac system is plumbed, you'll see that the small upper inlet hose is plumbed to the radiator at the top of the right tank, and the larger lower outlet hose is teed into the bottom radiator hose, so in that car it doesn't have constant flow through the tank like the one on the XJ, but only circulates some overflow during times the thermostat is open. On the plus side, I think most or all of them have a low coolant sensor built in.

You should let us know how you mounted that thing in the XJ. It has a rather odd shape as I recall. Also let us know how it works over time, and what you ultimately do about that mismatched hose size. I'd be willing to bet that somewhere in the automotive world there is a molded bypass hose or something that has a necked down end on it.

Yes, in fact i found a coolant Y At the local Pep Boys. I could plumb that in and make it work. But i'm eventually going to do something that involves a radiator cap... I should have asked for the open system when i replaced my radiator... Oh wells..

I will get a picture up this afternoon.
-Nick