94 escort temp gage goes to hot...

[mightymoose_22]

AN inoperative fan does not explain having no heat from the heater. You may have multiple problems.
Does the fan come on when you turn on the A/C? It should...
It also may not be turning on because the overheating has possibly fried the sensor. You have two sensors in the heater hose line... one for the gauge and one for the fan. I THINK that if you simply disconnect the plug from the sensors the fan is supposed to turn on... give that try. If the fan comes on with A/C on or with the sensor unplugged then you can pretty much scratch a bad fan off the list.
A good starting point for you is to determine if your water pump is working... and you can do that as I described in a previous post by feeling for pressure at the upper radiator hose. If there is no pressure, you have a bad water pump. If you do get pressure (when hot) then you have blockage in the radiator, heater core, or both.

[tripletdaddy]

You need to ground the signal wire to get the fan to run. Grounding the red/black wire will give you hi fan speed. Grounding the yellow/white wire will give you low speed. Believe it or not, Ford's FSM is not especially clear on this, but the best I can tell there is just one temp sensor for the fan and it has only two wires to it, assuming you have the 1.9L. The 1.8L is more complicated. If you have AC you will have two speeds, but the "book" shows a one speed fan motor w/o AC. In other words, you may have the two wires even w/o AC but you will only get one speed with either wire. Separately, is the temp sending unit that only is for the temp gauge in the dash, and it has a single wire to it.

[mightymoose_22]

the 1.9 does have two sensors. THe one on the front is the one for the fan/computer, the one to the rear goes direct to the sensor. They are side by side in the same hose.

[tripletdaddy]

Originally Posted by mightymoose_22

the 1.9 does have two sensors. THe one on the front is the one for the fan/computer, the one to the rear goes direct to the sensor. They are side by side in the same hose.

I'm not sure what you mean "direct to the sensor." I will rephrase myself. There is a temp sender for the temp gauge in the dash. Is that "the one to the rear" you are referring to?Because, there are two additional engine coolant temperature thermistors as per Ford FSM, but what I said before was that it wasn't clear if the two thermistors were in seperate units or just one unit. I wasn't talking about the temp sending unit for the dash gauge. Both of the thermistors provide information to the computer. They send seperate and different signals to the computer when they measure a particular temperature, one to signal the low fan speed on and the other the high speed. Anywho, either there is one or two ECTs and the one unit for the dash, making a total of two or three of the sensors screwed into the cooling system. See what I mean? I regret even opening the door to this, but my bet all along there is only two screw in units. Looking at my Taurus and Windstar of similar years there's a third temp sensor looking thing screwed into one of the heater hoses, to create even more confusion.

[AzTumbleweed]

That won't explain the heater problem...

[mightymoose_22]

Oops... I meant to say "direct to the gauge".
Yes, there are only two sensors on this car as described above.
Yes, the no heat problem is still unresolved.
Again, the only real possibilities are blockage or pump failure, but I suspect that with pump failure there would still be a moderate amount of heat.

[tripletdaddy]

Blockage does seem to be the most reasonable possibility and not that terribly difficult to investigate. Much of that is already discussed like checking for hot heater hoses and running a garden hose through them to backflush, etc. I would even expect both the radiator and the heater core should be able to handle near or full flow from a garden hose if not blocked. If you can look inside the radiator thru the cap, you may be able to see if there is any build up in it. I would expect the top to look the best and the bottom to be the worst. So if there is any at the top, then I'd expect much more at the bottom. Maybe that's wrong, but I remember a heavy duty diesel truck radiator I rebuilt having gook from top to bottom.