This weekend was to be my Jeep's first, long road trip. Everything was ready. The bed was packed to the brim with camping equipment, coolers, guns, rods and sleeping bags. I had spent all last week "priming" her: reinstalled the rear seat facing back, installed new backup lights, had the engine tuned perfectly, everything was set up, ready to do. I didn't sleep at all on Friday night with anticipation of the farm camping, bass fishing and beer drinking that was going to take place Saturday night at my buddy's farm in Dublin, GA (about 180 miles from where I live). I picked up my friend at 6:30am Saturday morning, hit the back roads and watched the sunrise over coastal Georgia as I smiled from ear to ear... This is what my Jeep is made for.
30 miles outside of St. Simons, my eyes started watering. At first, I thought I was so happy I was tearing up. No. 15 seconds later I realized it was smoke and steam causing my eyes to burn and then the steam just billowed out from under the hood.
I guess it's a Jeep thing, but it seems you always know exactly what is that it my radiator. It blew a nice size crack under the upper hose fitting. Nothing could fix that except a new radiator. Of course no auto parts store in SE GA had one, I called them all. "Replace the Radiator" moved rapidly up to the top of the Jeep to-do list.
So, I had it towed back to the house, picked up my buddies Tacoma, threw all the stuff in the back; no more neat packing like previously performed. No more back roads to take. We jumped on the interstate, hauled a*s up to the farm and cracked my first beer just shy of noon. I had sorrows to drink away now.
Caught three largemouths and cooked some dang-good meat, so the weekend wasn't a total loss, but man... what a bummer. I ordered a 3-row radiator last night, so hopefully that'll get in this week and I'll be back to rolling soon. Above is a pic of the farm, enjoy.
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