Radiator Fan Issues

[colecaswell]

Working on my 1983 1.9 westy

Radiator fan has not worked in a long time - while back a garage in NM hard wired it to a switch on dash - it worked manually like this for a year or so - then it stopped working... I have undone the hardwired switch on the dash etc... replaced the radiator temp sensor and hooked everything back up factory - fan will not fire when jumped at the radiator temp plug.... I swapped the radiator fan relay 24 with another relay 24 on my fuse panel - no difference - still no fan. Then I pulled the fan out - connected it direct to battery for a bench test and it fired right up - low and high speed worked smooth. When I Test power with my multi meter there is power at the radiator temp plug - if I jump power to low speed at the plug and follow the low speed wire it goes from the plug to the fan - at the fan connector I can test proper voltage - but as soon as I plug in the ground from the fan voltage drops to 0. I have cleaned and moved the ground wire from the fan to a new grounding tree still nothing. Unsure what to do or why its not working - was going to buy a new relay 24 and see if that helps but I am unsure of that idea sense I already switch it out.

Thanks for Any ideas or methods to make the fan run would be great - need to fix this issue before Moving along to the next step in this repair down time

[stormforge]

Next step for me might be carefully following all the wires back to the fuse panel. Measure resistance on each section of wire. Carefully examine each connector pin. I'd also take a close look at what the garage might have done while they were hard-wiring things to the dash switch. Probably time to rip that all out and put things back the way VW intended.

Have you tried a different fuse? Bear in mind that it's possible, under rare circumstances, for a circuit to pass voltage (it reads 12v) but not be able to pass the current required to run a device. Is anything getting hot?

-Bill
'89 Syncro

[colecaswell]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the reply! Late yesterday I got things working again - did pretty much exactly what you described and found that the fuse was letting voltage through but not functioning when there was a load on the circuit. Luckily there seem to be no wear form heat on any of the wires or components and I now have the system set back up the way it was intended.

Thanks for the advice!
Cole

[Wildthings]

Buy fuses that have the brass strips instead of fuses with the zinc strips and coat the ends of the fuses with dielectric grease before inserting them. If your fuse box has gotten hot and warped you may have continuing problems and may find it better to go to an inline fuse.