She can't take the heat! HELP!

[Guest]

Hi!
my little 88 944 lux is a daily runner which I use to and from work, she has done 116k on a full history, and although she is in need of a gearbox rebuild, and replacement sills, she is reliable and mechanically pretty sound...... HOWEVER!!!!!!!

Last night I had a bit oif a shock, after dropping off a date! I looked down at my temp gauge and she was just approaching the red line! there was no smoke, leaks, horrible oil, sweet smelling exhaust fumes, however what I did find was that the cooling fan was not switching on! So checked the fuse, I should be so lucky (Not that), so I presume the the only other bits it could be is the switch, or relay? is there anything else that I should check out at all? and how do I do it? where the heck is the switch on the rad?

Oh whislt I am on here a few other questions,
Had the oil pressure switched changed, and it is still bouncing all over the place, where is the earth point for this circuit, (as all eletrical problems so far have been a bad earth!)


Kind regards as always
Chris

 

[Mark_Bennett]

Must have been a hot date! [8D]

It might also be the actual wires to the thermocouple (?) on the rad - I found that mine had corroded really badly on my previous 944 - the wire was brittle and just crumbled []

I just spliced a new bit in, but was running around for a couple of days with a jumper wire accross the relevant terminals on the relay to keep the fans running continuously before I was able to fix...[&:]

 

[Guest]

That is actually rather funny (Hot Date) [] Well I was more concern about my baby over heating than how the date went, sad I know! But it was a good one, although she found it rather funny that I drive a car from the 80's! Not everyone can have good taste I guess!

Is it the conectors at the top right hand of the rad that I can splice together?

 

[Mark_Bennett]

In my case I was able to get the fans running by connecting across the 2 terminals in the relay box that the relay would close if it was triggered (you can see which ones on the diagram on the relay), I used a couple of blade terminals and a short bit of insulated wire, and put this in instead of the relay.
I think my corroded wires were at the bottom of the rad - they were exposed to the elements which must have contributed to thier early demise... I remember laying on my back under the front of the car to get at them.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure that wasn't a fan wire - maybe I'm getting two different problems mixed up (it was a few years ago!)

Whatever, I hope this helps (you can hopefully hardwire the fan on, and look out for corroded wires in addition to the other items you already mentioned).

 

[Fen]

Usually the switch fails with the fan running all the time. Maybe that means it's a relay problem?

 

[SteveSJS]

On Mine the fan was actually sticking, touching it very carefully with a screw driver got it started.
Having proved that other than that nothing else was wrong we managed to spray some WD40 into the back of the fanblade/fan motor aperture and - touch wood - for the moment that has cured the problem.

HTH

SteveS

 

[NeilW]

kel944, mine did the same. I tried shorting the radiator sensor wires and sure enough the fans worked. I therefore swapped the sensor but subsequently noticed that the fan still wasn't always kicking in. The solution turned out to be the spade connectors to the fan itself. Took them off gave them a light sanding and the fan has worked ever since (14 months). Good luck.

 

[Guest]

Just to let you guys know that spliced the wires together for a couple of days and used the fuse to turn the fan on and off, so when driving my fan was on all the time, it turned out to be the thermostat so no major problems and replaced it,

Thanks for the suggestion concerning the splicing good trick,

Oh found the oil sensor malfunction as well, the cable was knackered so it will be a replacement sender unit, as it is the conection that is brokern!