To try to answer your question, milky oil means there is water (coolant) in it. This points to a bad head gasket or possibly engine block crack. Do not drive it with watery oil. You will lose a rod bearing in no time. If you have a cracked block you will be better off finding a used motor at a junkyard, is it a 4.0L I6? Now which pulley are you talking about? The water pump? You can't replace just that pulley, the whole water pump gets replaced.
So you have a new radiator, that's a start. Are you losing radiator fluid from the radiator at all? Does the heater give out good heat? I would guess, if it wasn't losing fluid, that your problem would be a stuck shut thermostat, or possibly the water pump. The beauty is, both parts are not that difficult in a jeep to replace. And now that it needs a new serpentine belt, your halfway home getting the water pump off now! I'd drain the radiator system and buy a new water pump and a new thermostat, as it's like a 6 dollar part, and replace both. If u get a lot of wiggle when u turn the water pump pulley it could be bad. Leaking from the weephole is common. It howls when your engine is running. The pulley can 'dance' from the water pump. Etc. etc. if it was me, waterpump and thermostat. If your leaking radiator fluid somewhere other then pump well then, it could be something else entirely.
just replace the pulley. when the bearings are wearing out, they make a squealing noise. if the pulley is the one on the belt tensioner assembly... that is an expensive part. Moving parts do not last forever. Some of those pulleys just bolt on. Pulley replacement should be 1 hour or less of labor at a shop... but usually a lot longer to do it at home cause you have to take a whole bunch of stuff out and get on your back underneath it.
You are lucky the pulley didn't break off and damage something as it was violently ejected. the worn bearing creates friction which creates heat which then makes the pulley break off or crack.
The vehicle is 14 years old. This kind of thing is to be expected.
The head is cracked. Jeeps do that. Replace the head and gasket. Do not waste any more time and money playing with flushes and sealers. You need to spend some real money to get it fixed right.
Hello,
We purchased a 2001 Jeep Cherokee. I never looked in the radiator. About eight months later it stared overheating. We took it in to a repair shop. The radiator was full with oily/rusted liquid. I had the radiator/system chemically flushed. About one week later it over heats again radiator fluid again looks oily/rusted. Repair shop said the head gaskets are cracked and it needs to be smoothed. They send it out, re-flush the system. Then we drive a few days and again it over heats. Repair shop says the radiator fluid was leaking out the old radiator top because it may not fit the new radiator correctly. I was surprised the new radiator didn't come with a new top. They gave me a new top. Then it over heats again, I do not take it back to the same repair shop. I was trying to get it to another shop when the Serpentine belt broke and then everything started to come to an end. I pull over and call Triple A. A man comes over and starts to help me unwind the twisted/melted Serpentine belt off of everything. He shows me that the one pulley does not spin like the others and showed me that it was cracked, he goes on to say possibly the water pump has not been able to work like it should and maybe this is some of the cause for the system to not function correctly and over heat. It now sits in my driveway. I found out two yrs. prior, that the previous owner took it to a local repair shop.
