My coolant/radiator/AC fan has not been working for about a month and a half now, so i did a bit of research on here and nothing really helped my situation. I checked the fan motor, still works. I checked the relays, still good. The engine temp gauge was going up to about 70% in bad traffic and would come down when i was moving good. When i was beating on it, it would go to about 80% where the transmission would start to bog down,IE not shift correctly, then i would stop cause i didnt want to hurt it. Then i took it to my GM dealership. This is where my frustration starts. They said that the fan kicked on at a NORMAL 224 degrees fahrenheit. 224 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Water boils at 212, and with Dexcool in it, another 12degrees has to be pretty close! I know most engine thermostats are around 180 degree, and some others are upwards of that, but is what they say true? Is this car so badly engineered that the fan wont kick on till its about to boil the insides out? Please help me with this, Im at wits end and just want to drive the damn thing off of a cliff! Oh, btw, i have a 98 2200 since im sure things may be different for a Z24.
I'm not sure about j-bodies in particular, but in general 220-225 is not unusually high for a coolant fan to kick in at. Check the coolant temp sensor or sensors. If they check out, get your temperature high enough to kick the fan in. If it still doesn't, it's an electrical problem that should be fairly simple to trace.
Well lets look at it this way.
The hotter a car rusn, the less emission it will produce. Hotter temps, means more of the mixture will be burned. They also try to to lean it out as much as possible, with at crusing some cars 16:1 A/F, that is lean, but then again leaner is hotter, better for emissions, but to lean and you blow a hole in the piston, anwyays side tracked there.
Water does boil at 212, but the cooling system is under pressure, for every pound of pressure it raises the boiling point three degrees, so 8 psi it is raised 24degrees.
The cooling fan on cars with small block 350ci, kicks on at 220F, so 224F doesnt sound to out of the question.
- 2004 Cavalier - 124k, owned since new
Riley Webb wrote:others are upwards of that, but is what they say true? Is this car so badly engineered that the fan wont kick on till its about to boil the insides out?
Poorly engineered? I would expect that the engineers decided for some good reason that 224 degrees is exactly when they wanted the fan to come on.
Just because you don't know the reasoning behind it, doesn't make it poorly engineered.
The thermostat opens at 180 degrees, helping to regulate your engine by passing cooler fluid through the engine. The fan kicks on at 224 degrees to prevent overheating. If you want it on earlier, turn your AC on or do the fan override switch modification.
Other then that, your car is running normal. And stop beating on it.
I dunno...if he means 80% is when his needle is more then 3/4 of the way to the red zone that is too hot. It should run about 50% (needle straight up) or a little hotter 60%. anyways I don't know where 224 hits on the temperature dial but maybe your fan just isn't the problem.
