? cooling fan help

A4TurboAvant · #1 (**permalink**) 04-21-2005, 10:45 AM

79 rabbit,,, noticed that when the car is at idle the water temp gets pretty high, and it seems like the cooling fan isnt kicking on but i wasn't gonna let the engine get any hotter just to see if the fan would kick on, i was looking for some sort of fan switch being familiar with mk2's not so much mk1's however all i found was wire's running into the fan motor but no switch anywhere on the rad. , my next step is to run powerinto the car to a switch then run from the switch to the fan so i can turn the cooling fan on and off manually as i please but is there anything else i might be overlooking??? thanks

also engine runs nice and cool while driving only gets hot at idle.

retro_rocket · #2 (**permalink**) 04-21-2005, 11:24 AM

Dunno about on a '79, but on my '83 the fan switch is on the bottom of the radiator towards the driver's side. Use a wire jumper to test and see if the switch is working, if the fan does not come on this way then your switch is bad.

Also check the fuse for the fan and see if it is blown. When I got my car I had a similar problem, I replaced the thermoswitch twice and that didn't fix the problem - turned out the fan motor itself was bad, it was on a 20 or 30 amp fuse but was drawing something like 45 amps. I replaced it with another used motor that was only drawing 9 amps and haven't had any problems since then.

Fourt1thirty · #3 (**permalink**) 04-21-2005, 12:31 PM

Yep, there should be a switch on the radiator. Another issue that people have problems with is if the coolent level is below the sensor it wont get the sensor hot enough to turn on.

A4TurboAvant · #4 (**permalink**) 04-21-2005, 01:26 PM

i'll check rad. again for switch but i'm almost 90% sure i didn't see one, i completely overlooked the coolant level and fuses so i'll check'em out, thanks for the feedback guys. one thing i gotta add its nice to work on an older car even if the problem is a little more difficult to diagnose.