Cooling problem

Hello everybody. I just noticed a crack in the radiator this morning and thankfully I caught it before anything major broke. I'm going to replace it in the morning but there was something else curious that I noticed while inspecting the rest of the car. The fans never came on once for like 10 minutes while the car was idleing. I then turned on the air conditioning to see if they would turn on and they did at the normal speed. WHen I turned off the A/C, the fans turned off with it. Could it be that one of the relays is broken because I tested them for continuity and they seemed to check out. Could it possibly be the thermostat? I'm stumped as to why the fans would stop working all of a sudden. Any help you can provide would be lovely. THanks!! :smile:

Your fan operation seems normal to me. Both fans should turn on when you turn the A/C on and off when you turn it off. Other than that, they should only turn on when the engine reaches a certain temperature. If you still had plenty of coolant in the system, chances are that temperature was never reached. A better test, after you replace the radiator, might be to take the car for a 15 minute ride to warm it up and then return and let it idle for a while. Watch the temperature gage while you are idling. If it doesn't go much past the mid range mark, the fan still may not come on.

Mike

The thing is the car never goes past the half way mark. The car was at the normal operating temperature because I had just driven it but it still did not cut on the fans even after I rev'ed the engine a couple of times. I assume the car should cut on the fans at least once in the 10-15 minutes that I let it idle but you may be right.

You can try the idle test without revving the engine. When you rev the engine the waterpump is turning faster, circulating more coolant and helping to cool down the engine a bit. You may have to let it idle up to 45 minutes to get the fans to turn on. I really think you are Ok as long as the gage never gets much past the midpoint.

Mike