On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, gary hradek wrote:

>      My disconnect is more obvious.   Sometimes it
> will run 10 or 15 minutes in the hotter area with only
> the low speed fan running.   Othertimes the medium
> speed fan will be running when the temp gauge
> indicates that it should be off.   I think it is just
> a poorly designed system that works marginally.

It's possible.  I have a diesel, which is a somewhat different animal, but
on the rare occasions my fan needs to run it seems to do a good job.  It's
possible the diesel just plain pumps out less heat at idle, though,
making any problems less obvious.  The last time my low-speed fan came on,
it was about 75 degrees F out and I'd been sitting in traffic for half an
hour without moving.  It came on before the gauge needle had moved more
than half a needle-width above normal, which suggested to me that it
wasn't so much an increase in engine temperature that had triggered it as
an increase in radiator temp (due to a long period with no airflow).

A lot of people have also tinkered with the dynamics of this system by
putting in thermostats or thermo switches with different setpoints, and
I'm really not sure how that would affect things.  There's probably an
optimum combination of engine thermostat and thermo switch setpoints that
works "best".

David Brodbeck, N8SRE
'82 Diesel Westfalia
'94 Honda Civic Si