97 XJ Country, automatic, 160K miles, trying to get to the bottom of a problem. The other day I drove away from my house in the morning, and I noticed immediately something felt weird.
On acceleration it didn't really want to shift, felt kinda like it was stuck in 2nd or something. Deceleration felt similar -- like when I got up to speed and then laid off the gas to coast, it didn't want to slow down. After 5 min on the highway I got smoke from under the hood and the engine died when I pulled over to stop. I discovered a big leak from the lower radiator hose next to the water pump, and what was left of the coolant in the reservoir was smoking. The temp gauge never showed overheating, there was no smoke out the tailpipe, and the dipstick had clear oil (to me this should rule out head gasket).
I replaced the radiator hose, filled the coolant back up, let it idle a while, and drove around the block a few times. The idle was totally smooth and the engine temp climbed to 210 at a steady pace. BUT the accel/decel 'stiffness' remains. Anybody got any ideas?
On acceleration it didn't really want to shift, felt kinda like it was stuck in 2nd or something. Deceleration felt similar -- like when I got up to speed and then laid off the gas to coast, it didn't want to slow down. After 5 min on the highway I got smoke from under the hood and the engine died when I pulled over to stop. I discovered a big leak from the lower radiator hose next to the water pump, and what was left of the coolant in the reservoir was smoking. The temp gauge never showed overheating, there was no smoke out the tailpipe, and the dipstick had clear oil (to me this should rule out head gasket).
I replaced the radiator hose, filled the coolant back up, let it idle a while, and drove around the block a few times. The idle was totally smooth and the engine temp climbed to 210 at a steady pace. BUT the accel/decel 'stiffness' remains. Anybody got any ideas?
