The electric cooling fan stays on when the key is turned on, what I think what my mechanic did was to simply insert a bypass wire into the cooling fan plug. The fan then wired to always run on low speed when the key is turned but the engine is not started. Do I need a new fan kick-on switch? If so, where is it located? Man, this is confusing stuff-
Thanks-

 

You probably had a bad relay and he just bypassed it. Get a new fan relay, NAPA #AR-279. Replace the relay first before going any further. To really help I need a litle more info. If he jumped the fan to be on all the time look for the relay socket and see if he put a wire across 2 of the contacts. Try to find out what he did then get back to me.

 

Well, that is exactly what he did. To bypass one wire stays in the first inlet out of the three. The fan speed can be switched to fast by moving the wire to the other plug inlet. I have been reading around and I found that a lot of people say that keeping the fan on at all times is fine, since the car is only a summer car. I have the fan running all the time on LOW and then I switched the thermostat to 160. You know, IROCs are terrible in winter so I figure that is what I will do, what do you think?
Thanks

 

what fan are you talking about? the electric engine cooling fan only runs at one speed. the interior blower fan has different speeds-i am a little confused.

 

My Bad....
I could have sworn that the electric cooling fan behind the radiator was capable of operating at two different speeds. Let me check again and see what is up with that...Are the later model IROC fans better because they have two smaller fans instead on one big one....?
Thanks-
PS- Maybe I should post that question

 

as far as i know the eletric fans for cooling the radiator/coolant is just one speed..

the factory dual fans seem to cool a tad better than just one..

 

Dual fan setups are preferred and are more efficient. They usually showed up on the tuned port models. Did the mechanic REMOVE the fan relay? You cannot change the fan speed by moving around a wire. If the relay is still in place he probably has one wire tied to it going from the relay socket to ground. I have worked on a mess of cars with cooling fan issues, however at this point to be of any more help I need to know more.

 

question: where is the fan-relay?

My car has recently started to overheat when driving through traffic... planning to check out the radiator for gunk/leaves, coolant level, and the fan relay < dunno how to go about "checking" the fan relay...

Thanks,
Brian

 

heres a shot of the relays on my car.

 

This is kinda funny to me , I did what you are talking about you mechanic did on purpose. I hooked one fan to the ignintion so it is running with the ignition, the the other fan to a toggle switch inside the car, I love this setup because it keeps my car running beautiful, and i almost never even turn on the second fan. I though alot of people do this, as i have heard it done alot. But maybe its a bad thing for some people!!!!

 

thanks... will take a look tomorrow morn

 

On my tpi the fanrelay(4 wires) is between the radiator and the airfilter.
The fan has one speed, but there is a temprature sensor on the intake(I guess)and it controls the fan to turn on-off.
I would check these 2 things for bypass.
Check the relay inside to, cause mine burned to hell when I had the same problem.
Good luck!