Cooling Fan

After doing my water pump, stat, radiator and hoses, I've pretty much narrowed my cooling probs down to when my fan comes on, or a bad head gasket. If it is the gasket, it must not be mixing with the oil, probably just bad around a awater journal, or possibly even a clog in the system????? Other than that, I was gonna have my pal either hook my fan up to a toggle switch, or even to something like the stereo or something that is constanly on when the key is turned on. Think that'd be the easiest way out for now? Little help please, it seems like all you guys wanna do is talk, thirdgen.org gave me some real help with my clutch....

a bad head gasket will cause large bubbles in the radiator. the fan should come on at 220* i think. if it doesn't, change the switch in the passenger side of the engine. i priced one a few weeks ago and i think it was $18

My camaro had the same problem, and I changed the switch. The switch was 9$ at Autozone, but it never turned on the fan. I hooked up a toggle switch. You need the toggle switch, two female connector ends, and three wires. The toggle needs two hot wires- One going to the right fan clip, to the toggle, and then another from the toggle, to the positive battery terminal. The left fan clip is a ground- put it anywhere that is metal, like a frame bolt. Anything of that nature will work. When you start the car, turn on the fan, and when you turn off the car, turn the fan off. Overall, it's like 15$ to do it this way, but it bypasses everything and is very simple to do. Changing the switch requires removal of the alternator and belt, as well as working in an awkward place.

Hope it helps.

you need a relay to do that or you'll burn up the switch.
there's a much much easier way of doing this tho. find the 2 relays on the fireway, one is for the fuel pump and one for the fan. find the one with the smaller orange wire and cut it or splice into it so you can run it through a switch to ground. this is much easier and cheaper. just need a cheap switch and bout 8ft of light gauge wire. and it uses the existing relay.

but i'd change the fan switch in the block first.

Jumping out the cooling fan is gay. I just had to fix this problem on my iroc because the previous owner was too lazy to fix the problem correctly. As soon as I turned the key forward the fans would pop on before I even turned the engine over. I got the problem fixed and cleaned up the grounds and now I just need to replace the secondary fan because only the primary one works.

is there any kind of switch that's automatic? it seems like everything people talk about you have to make sure you turn off when you shut down, i guess i always thought it worked with the ecm and you could get a fan switch that worked the same way stock except it turned on at lower temps. any ideas?

you need a relay to do that or you'll burn up the switch

havent burned mine up yet :biggrin:

is there any kind of switch that's automatic? it seems like everything people talk about you have to make sure you turn off when you shut down, i guess i always thought it worked with the ecm and you could get a fan switch that worked the same way stock except it turned on at lower temps. any ideas?

You could try the Hypertech Thermomaster chip.. You can program it to turn your fans on at a lower temp. Then put a 160 degree thermostat in and you'l be set

now I just need to replace the secondary fan because only the primary one works.

Are you sure it doesnt work?? My secondary fan wont turn on til the car is borderline overheating, or the A/C is on..

lol how do we go from a $15 piece at pep boys to the hypertech thing, so thats the cost of an automatic switch? now i wish i woulda laughed at everyone who told me to get the manual thing instead of riggin it up to run all the time. ill buy that for a dollar.

Ya its toast the brushes and crap in the motor are junk.