Here is what happened. I start the car and everything is fine, go out next day and the fans and alternator are not working. I have been checking older posts for two days and still cannot find what I am looking for. The car is a 1987 Pontiac Trans Am with the 5.0L FI engine with an automatic. I noticed the alternator was not charging and the passenger side fan, which had been hardwired through the relay, were not coming on. I located the relay and took it apart and that is when I found a piece of wire connected inside the relay that made it turn the cooling fan on when the ignition was on, I have purchased and installed a new relay. The car has the voltage gauge, not the light. I do some reading and discover that the tan wire with white stripe are connected to the fan relay and alternator. I go out and probe the wires with a multi-meter and find the wire. I check for voltage and there is none. I then jump the battery lug from the alternator to the tan/white wire and the fan starts. I go ahead and start the car and low and behold I am getting 14.5 volts at the battery. The alternator wires on my car are a brown, tan/white, a thinner red, and a thick red. I am using an Ohio Generator high output alternator so the two red wires are connnected to the battery lug, the tan/white is on the "2" terminal on the regulator and the brown wire is just capped and tied up. I, and the previous owner, have not had a problem with this. I then did some more reading and found out there is a "fan" fuse under the dash. I go ahead and try and check that, but the writing on the fuse holder is gone. I did find one burnt up spot where a fuse used to go, but no fuse there and not label so I do not know what it goes to. I need a picture of the fuse panel with the spaces for the fuses. Also does anyone know where the tan/white wire go from the alternator to the fan relay. Is it into the dash, to the ECM? I just need to find where the break in the circuit is so I can fix it. I think since I am getting the fan relay to work the break has to be before the alternator and not after it. I did get a replacement relay so now the fans will come on when they are supposted to. I also know that I could just use a jumper wire from the alternator lug to the tan/white wire, but I would rather just fix it right. Also the car has the voltage gauge, not the light. I know the post is long and maybe hard to follow as I left out some non important stuff during testing. Thanks, Eric

I worked on it some more today and traced the wire back to a burnt up spot in the fuse panel. I removed the fuse panel and discovered the previous owner had put a splice in fuse holder that is powering the wire. The incoming wire is a larger orange wire, looks like the one that came from the fuse box, and just added a new fuse holder. I redid the fuse holder since the fuse box place was burnt up and when I checked it with the multi meter it was only getting 6 volts. I ended up just running a new wire and new fuse holder to a switched 12 volt source in the fuse box. I could not locate any type of main power relays that feed the fuse box. If anyone has that information that would be very helpful.

Thanks,
Eric