Fan problem

[Powerefx]

Hey guys i think theres a problem with my radiator fan on my 93 1.9. When i bought the car, there was some major cylinder head work to be done, after doing so, my coolant used to boil over before the fans even came on. (ive jumped the fan and it does work). I decided to take the thermostat out to alow the coolant to continously run through the engine and the coolant does not boilover now. However, the fan only comes on at high speed i believe, when the gauge is just a little past the L in Normal. Is this normal, or is it being heated to much before the fan comes on? Should there be a low fan speed before the gauge reaches so high of a point

[daleb9]

There is a temperature sensor that provides info to the computer, two relays, plus a lot of wires that might have intermittent shorts and/or opens.

I fussed with it for a month or two, finally found the relays under the air cleaner box, and decided to jumper that so the fan ran on low whenever the key was turned to run. That addressed the problem well enough and I let it go.

I did some long searching on Google Groups for "escort heater fan" and around the fiftieth page I saw a link to a message in which the writer declares the problem is in the ignition switch. I wasn't ready to spend $150 for a replacement when the jumper worked fine, so I didn't, then.

A few months later however, the darn ignition switch broke, the rod from the keylock cylinder to the switch itself snapped. Friendly local welders are few and far between, so I paid for a replacement at the dealer. It was kind of a messy job putting it in, they use bolts that are tapered right below the head, so the head breaks off when they're tight enough. To remove them you got to drill the old ones out. Messy.

So with the new switch in, after a few weeks I thought of the message, took the jumper off the relay circuit, and was pleased to find that the fan worked OK, it didn't come on when the motor first started up, but did after a few minutes. Curiously, the temp gauge showed almost the same thing as when the fan was always on low.

But after a month or two, I again noticed it was getting hotter, and found the fan wasn't coming on, I let it run at idle until the gauge was well over half way, fan didn't come on, nasty smells of crisping gasket cement. I shut it off and hooked up the jumper to the relays again.

This inclines me to consider the hypothesis about the ignition keyswitch plausible. Unfortunately, I am not inclined to tear out the ignition switch, which would be necessary to get test leads for a meter onto the connects. Possibly there is the trouble. I found that the new ignition keylock switch mechanism which detects whether the key is in the ignition or not became unreliable within a few months too.