I was at the track yesterday and my car overheated. Coolant was spurting out the overflow tank. I finally realized that my fan haden't been running. I just installed headers and I think I may not have reconnected some of the temp sensors. I've got some pictures of things im not sure about. Can someone please tell me what the stuff circled in yellow is. Also, my temp gage was bouncing all over the place, it actually bent the needle. Thanks

 

Heres the passengers side, near the firewall. What is it? It appears that the connector doesn't fit quite right, but there is no other place to hook it up.

 

Here's the drivers side of the engine. What are these connectors stuff? What is the metal thing connected to the engine, I can't find a connector to go over it.

 

The first picture is of the coolant fan switch, and it's connector. That is what turns the fan on or off, at a certain temperature. The connector looks like it's on right, it just snaps over the switch. Is their a wire on the connector, can't tell from the picture?

The second picture shows the coolant temp. sending unit (the metal thing you mentioned). That is what the temp. gauge in the dash uses to read the temp. of the coolant. The connector for it is not hooked up. It's a little hard to tell, but neither of those connectors look like the one that should go to the sending unit. Are there any more connectors that aren't hooked up on that side of the motor, by any chance?

An easy way to test the fan is to turn the AC on, and see if the fan comes on. If it does, than you know that the fan motor, relay, and most of the wiring for the fan is good. If not, than you can start checking things like just mentioned.

 

Yep, I hooked up the temp gauge thing. That works now. Yes there is a wire for the coolant temp switch. I tried grounding out the connector for the cooling temp switch. Obviously when the key is turned to the on position. It makes a clicking noise by the fan relay. Whats that mean?

 

That means the wire for the fan switch is good, as well as the fan relay. The fan switch is really just a thermal switch, once it reachs a certain temperature, the internal switch closes, and grounds the relay, which turns the fan on.

When the relay clicked, did the fan turn on?

 

No it didn't. And all my heater stuff doesnt blow anymore either.

 

That's odd. The heater shouldn't have much of anything to do with the cooling fan.

Anyway, next thing I would try is to manually turn the fan on. Disconnect the electrical connector from the fan, and attach 2 jumper wires from the positive and negative battery cables directly to the 2 prongs of the fan motor, and see if the fan works then. If the fan doesn't work when jumping it, the fan motor is bad. If the fan does work when jumping it, I'd start tracing wires from the fan as well as the fan relay and look for burns, shorts, exposed wires , etc.

 

Ahh. Well I did figure it out. I ended up trying to start the fan manually with the battery. It started. I then replaced my relay and now it works. I forgot to check to see if my heater blower worked though. Thanks for the help though.
-Greg