Well, this has been quite a day.

Yesterday my dad and I were working on the car, fixing my transmission linkage and we had to jack up the car. Well, to make a long story short, I jacked up the car on the radiator support brace thing .

So basically, it bent that metal piece up enough to make the fan not spin, it was jammed. So I was going through the city when my temp. gauge started going up and wouldn't go down, then smoke started coming out of the hood, so I pulled over and looked. The smoke wasn't from the engine, rather it was from the Radiator Fan Motor.

So I let it cool off and took it home. We inspected it and noticed that the fan wouldn't spin by hand and we took it out and bought a new fan motor, however we were curious as to if the old motor worked still, so we jumped it from the battery to the terminals and it spun, just like it had before.

So we figure "screw it" and we pound down the radiator support so the fan wont get jammed and put the old motor back in along with the fan. Keep in mind, the old motor works fine, so we put it back in and we start the car. with the A/C on the fan wont start. Even when the temp gauge reached a hair under "Redline" it still wouldn't turn on so we shut the car off before it overheated.

We checked the relay and it was fine. We jumped a wire from the brown terminal to the black/pink terminal and the fan turned on. We checked the fuse and it's ok. We checked the wiring for the fan up until about the battery and it looked OK so we just gave up. It has to be SOMETHING in-between the Relay and and Motor itself that is not making it turn on.

Please somebody help me. I really need this fixed as this is my daily driver. What could I look for in-between the Relay and the Motor that would make the fan not turn on when it's supposed to? Any fusible links? special wiring? WHAT?

 

Did the fan work normally before? If the motor works, the relays good, the fuse is good, and the wiring seems good, then it sounds to me like a faulty fan switch. This is assuming that your engine is a 305 TBI.

The fan switch is located in the passenger side cylinder head in between the #6 and #8 spark plugs. It's what makes the fan come on. At a predetermined temperature (somewhere around 240* for stock), the fan switch grounds, causing the circuit to the fan to become complete, thus the fan turns on. You can check the wiring to it just by removing the wire to the fan switch and grounding it, and see if the fan turns on.

Although, having smoke come from your fan motor, even though it still works when hotwired, doesn't sound good .

 

OK, so between the #'s 6 + 8 spark plugs I should find the fan switch, and then ground it... got it.

i'm going to go out there and see if it works. Let's hope it doesn't (so that way it's an easy fix).

I'll be back later on for the follow-up

 

Well upon checking and seeing that the coolant switch was working good, we looked around for a bit... and found a busted wire.

Long story short, it was the fusable link at the junction block on the side of the battery and radiator that busted.....


Thanks for your help though. Let this be a lesson to people who have checked everything and their fan doesn't work!