Firstly, after getting home from work one day, I noticed the radiator cooling fans were still on after I turned the car off and began to go inside. I didn’t think much of it as occasionally the fans had ran for just a moment after shutting the car off before. However they were running full blast, which was a little unusual. I came back outside 30 minutes later to check and they were still running.
I knew something was wrong but purely out of curiosity I let the fans run to see if they really were incapable of shutting off. 8 hours later checking on them they’re still going, though much slower because they’ve effectively drained my battery. The timeline from here is pretty diverse so I will try to keep it concise.
– Jump car, fans are off when car is on
– Turn car off again, fans start up full blast and refuse to turn off.
– Disconnect battery, reconnect, fans fire up instantly and continue to run up until I turn the car on.
– With car running, unplugged and replugged in the fan control module, heard a click, and the fans began running while the car was on.
– Turned the car off and back on to see if this was permanent. It was not. However now the fans would run for 15-30 seconds after shutting the car off and then they would shut off. Fans would run after turning car on for about 30 seconds but would shut off and not come back on until the car was shut off.
I know what you’re thinking. The fan control module needs to be replaced! So we popped out the radiator fans, took off the old module, installed the brand new one and….basically no change, if anything it gets worse.
– Took a 30 minute night drive as my test run. Fans didn’t kick on during the entire drive or after turning car off. Weird. This was at night but still in the upper mid 80s. There’s no way the engine was cool enough to not need the fans.
– Took a 30 minute drive the next morning and nothing. In fact, I was getting hot air in standstill traffic from the lack of fan cooling being applied to the coolant. Highway speeds would still provide cold air. After this drive, also, the fans would kick on briefly after shutting the engine off, and then would turn off about 20 seconds later.
– Every ride since then I’ve gotten 0 fan power, either before, during, or after a drive. Coolant levels are fine. Unplugged and replugged in the module multiple times. Nothing. We’re at the point now that I can’t seem to get cold air in the cabin no matter the conditions. I took a morning, highway drive for about 10 minutes at 80 degrees and the best I got was above room temperature air conditioning.
Any suggestions on what the cooling fan issue could be? We replaced the radiator just about a year ago and flushed the entire cooling system out as well. This issue didn’t seem to happen until that first day where the fans refused to shut off. Thanks guys.
TL;DR
Cooling fans have gone from working when car is off, to not at all. Fan module has been replaced and now it seems fans never turn on, no matter how hot the engine runs.