It may be the head gasket leaking

This is my old original motor that has a suspect leaking head gasket. Since it has over 200,000 miles I figured I should just go ahead and replace the whole motor and that should take care of my overheating problem, right ?

This is my new ATK motor that I purchased from gearhead jeep. These guys make remanufactured motors for JeepSpeed off road racing.

These were some pictures taken when I pulled the old motor out of the vehicle. Talk about shadetree mechanic work. This is it.

This is my new ATK engine in the crate. One issue I had with ATK was that the motor was delivered without the blue straps attached and the motor had fallen over on its side. The crate was destroyed on one side. This picture was taken after I repositioned the motor into the crate and strapped it back down.

Overall the motor looks fine and should run great. This motor replacement did not correct my overheating problem. It wasn't a head gasket problem.

Exhaust pipe crushed

I purchased a new down pipe from NAPA auto parts to replace my suspect doenpipe which was chushed by a rock on one of my off-road trips. This is the new pipe next to the original down pipe.

New exhaust down pipe.

Ready to install.

Original down pipe with a large dent on the side.

In this shot you can see that the dent has restricted the flow of the exhaust gasses out of the engine. At this point in my quest to correct my overheating jeep this seems to be the culprit of my problem.

Another shot of the dent on the original pipe.