Vanagon Cooling Fan

[chrissev2]

Interesting and so far unsolveable issue with an 86 Westy cooling fan. Fan is the two speed variety (dealer installed AC, no longer works). The radiator fan does not run, at all.

I have jumped all of the wires at the thermostat on the rad, in many different combinations, and all together at once. Nothing happens. I replaced the fan with a brand new unit which I bench tested on 12 volts. It ran fine on the bench test, does not run at all in the Vanagon. I replaced the radiator and the thermo switch. I bled the cooling system and it works fine. Rad heats up like it should. Got all the air out of the top bleeder hole.

I know old VW electrical systems can be frustrating. With my 1980 rabbit I simply gave up on the cooling fan circuit and I run the fan straight off the battery with a 30 amp in line fuse. It works great. Doesn't go near the fuse box.

Can I do this with the Vanagon? Ie, can I simply wire the two hot wires directly to the battery, through the thermo switch and to the fan? Or will this break something? I see that this Vanagon's low speed fan appears to run directly through the fuse box to the fan (but it doesn't work) and the high speed fan appears to use a relay. As I said, the fan does not run at all so I am just guessing as to how it might work.

Also, where is the ground? I see no ground wire. Just three red wires, hooked up to the fan motor. It should have a ground shouldn't it?

Thanks for any help or stickies on this subject.


Chris
_________________
2024 GLI Jetta 6spd manual
2023 VW Atlas 3.6 VR6 Highline
1978 Volkswagen super beetle convertible
1992 Eurovan 2.5 5spd westfalia

[kourt]

GoWesty sells a fan grounding kit that has some photos that might be informative. Check it out:

http://www.gowesty.com/product-details.php?v=&id=24359

One of the wires should be brown--that is the ground wire.

The cooling fan circuit is remarkably simple. It is always live (it can still run in key-off condition), and is regulated by the thermoswitch in the radiator. If this were my van I would try to preserve that system as originally designed.

If I had to rig up something else I would put a relay on one of the ignition wires and let that relay control the current to the fan directly from the battery, fused near the battery, with really good grounds... but try to fix it properly first.

kourt

[PDXWesty]

There is a resistor in the circuit that provides the speed adjustments. Check that.

http://www.van-cafe.com/fan-resistor-for-vanagon-with-ac-aftermarket

Check this out too: www.van-cafe.com/shop/images/Vanagon_Fan_Controller_Features.pdf

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iy_b6WqOoQ

Bently Manual:

Location:

Does the fan turn on when you turn the air conditioning fan on? It should run when the AC is on even though it is not hooked up.
_________________
89 Westy 2.1 Auto

[atomatom]

did you check the fusebox?

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5607504
_________________
84 Vanagon Westy, 1.9L, California raised but defected to Canada.

[chrissev2]

[chrissev2]

[atomatom]

but one of your three red wires should be a ground. clean them up carefully before adding another ground. since you had the motor out, you may have switched them up, in which case, the fuse hopefully got it.
_________________
84 Vanagon Westy, 1.9L, California raised but defected to Canada.

[Vanagon Nut]

[PDXWesty]

The cooling fan relay could be bad too or have a loose connection. Start in the lower left corner of the wiring diagram posted above, at the fan, and start checking components. The line at the bottom of the diagram is the ground. Wires marked BR are brown and grounds.
_________________
89 Westy 2.1 Auto

[termuehlen]

The fan motor should have two electrical posts. One is hot and one is ground. You can see them in the gowesty "additional ground wire" picture linked above by Kourt. Two red wires go to the 12V post. One brown wire goes to the ground post. I would check to make sure you are wired correctly at the fan motor and that the ground is indeed, grounded.
_________________
1988 Westfalia automatic Subaru OBD1
1986 syncro tintop wbx

[chrissev2]

Thanks for all of the helpful suggestions. Going to tackle this tomorrow (Saturday). One thing I still don't understand is there is no brown wire going to the fan. There are two red wires, going together and then a striped red and black wire. I'll take a pic over the weekend. I have not been able to find a brown wire.

What I'm going to do is just hook the ground terminal on the fan directly to the van body with some of the brown ground wire I have lying around. See if that works.
_________________
2024 GLI Jetta 6spd manual
2023 VW Atlas 3.6 VR6 Highline
1978 Volkswagen super beetle convertible
1992 Eurovan 2.5 5spd westfalia

[Vanagon Nut]

[chrissev2]

So I dug into this mystery on Saturday. Determined the following:

1. Ground to the fan was open. So I have wired a second ground to the van body. Following that, still nothing worked.

2. The resistor behind the driver's side headlight was bad. I had a spare one so I swapped it out. The connector for the resistor was also very rusty, so spent time time cleaning that. When I was done, the low speed fan worked!

3. High speed fan: This one was tricky. The relay is supposed to be relay #5 as per Bentley and the fuse is supposed to be fuse position #1. Neither of these turned out to be true. The relay was actually sitting up top of the fuse box, on the firewall, under one of the heater ducts. It was of course covered in rust and not working as the windshield seal used to be bad before I replaced it, and water got all over it. Swapped in a new relay and cleaned up the connectors, and I had a high speed fan again.

While I was in there I figured out why the ground was not working. The ground tree that it is attached to was covered in rust. So cleaned that up, and I now have the fan properly grounded in two places.

So the usual Vanagon cluster f*ck situation. Pretty much everything was broken.

Interestingly enough, the only thing that WAS working was the feed wire from the battery. That is the first thing I noticed when I checked stuff with the multi testor. Testing on the main red lead to the rad thermo sensor across to the body (ground) gave me hot 12 volts. So I was like, this feed wire is hot, so all the problems have to be after the feed wire.

As I said, turned out pretty much everything was causing problems.
_________________
2024 GLI Jetta 6spd manual
2023 VW Atlas 3.6 VR6 Highline
1978 Volkswagen super beetle convertible
1992 Eurovan 2.5 5spd westfalia

[PDXWesty]

_________________
89 Westy 2.1 Auto

[timichango]

I've mentally added all of the mentioned failure points to my "list of potential causes for van shenanigans" repository.
_________________
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Vroomhilde-San: Our 1991 Silver Vanagon Westy automatic + Subie EJ25

[djkeev]

FYI...... Bentley's wiring diagram and VW's actual wiring on the early 2.1 A/C radiator fans do NOT agree.

Dave
_________________
Stop Dead Photo Links how to post photos

Ghia
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=392473

Vanagon
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6315537#6315537

Beetle
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=482968&highlight=74+super+vert

[Paulbeard]

[Wendy.the.Westy]

[chrissev2]

Thanks for all the help. Next job is to figure out why the instrument panel lights don't work (headlights work fine, but no panel lighting at all). I expect that will be another problem with multiple causes.....
_________________
2024 GLI Jetta 6spd manual
2023 VW Atlas 3.6 VR6 Highline
1978 Volkswagen super beetle convertible
1992 Eurovan 2.5 5spd westfalia

[PDXWesty]