Remember how our Geo Metro was cooling the engine too much when we first picked it up? Recently, it decided that it wanted to go the other way and overheated in traffic. I immediately suspected the radiator fan, and sure enough I was right - but not in the way I thought I was right.
The electrical parts of the fan were fine - the wiring, the fuse, relay, and motor. You might be able to see in the above picture that the fan itself is a bit cockeyed compared to the motor. It was jammed like that, and pulling the radiator shroud off revealed this interesting failure:
Somehow the radiator fan hub had broken free of the plastic fan!
Before heading to the junkyard for a replacement, I wanted to see if I needed just a fan, or the whole fan and motor assembly. Sometimes, when an electrical motor is jammed it can burn out. I wired the fan motor directly to the battery with some scrap wire, and it was definitely alive.
Six bucks and about fifteen minutes at the junkyard netted this replacement.
…and everything went back together, including a refill of the boiled-off coolant.
If an engine is severely overheated, especially an aluminum engine like this one, things can warp and bind and break. Luckily, everything seemed to come through this overheating without further problems - likely due to the quick recognition of the problem by my wonderful girl, followed by a quick pull over and shut down of the car. Continuing to drive an overheated engine is a surefire way to turn a small problem into a big one. Isn’t that right, Dad? (I’ll save you the details of his blown-up motor, after he continued to drive with no water pump)
This is a strange failure, but it was a cheap and easy fix. My only guess is that the cheap plastic can only take so many heat cycles from the radiator before it becomes brittle and snaps off.
Cost breakdown:
$6 - junkyard radiator fan
Incidental supplies:
a few litres of coolant for topping up
The electrical parts of the fan were fine - the wiring, the fuse, relay, and motor. You might be able to see in the above picture that the fan itself is a bit cockeyed compared to the motor. It was jammed like that, and pulling the radiator shroud off revealed this interesting failure:
Somehow the radiator fan hub had broken free of the plastic fan!
Before heading to the junkyard for a replacement, I wanted to see if I needed just a fan, or the whole fan and motor assembly. Sometimes, when an electrical motor is jammed it can burn out. I wired the fan motor directly to the battery with some scrap wire, and it was definitely alive.
Six bucks and about fifteen minutes at the junkyard netted this replacement.
…and everything went back together, including a refill of the boiled-off coolant.
If an engine is severely overheated, especially an aluminum engine like this one, things can warp and bind and break. Luckily, everything seemed to come through this overheating without further problems - likely due to the quick recognition of the problem by my wonderful girl, followed by a quick pull over and shut down of the car. Continuing to drive an overheated engine is a surefire way to turn a small problem into a big one. Isn’t that right, Dad? (I’ll save you the details of his blown-up motor, after he continued to drive with no water pump)
This is a strange failure, but it was a cheap and easy fix. My only guess is that the cheap plastic can only take so many heat cycles from the radiator before it becomes brittle and snaps off.
Cost breakdown:
$6 - junkyard radiator fan
Incidental supplies:
a few litres of coolant for topping up
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