electric fans on hot days

Our 1996 Saturn has 127K miles and we've had it since it was new. This
year for the first time the electric fan -- twice this summer -- has
remained on after the engine is shut down. Today it ran fo about three
minutes in the garage. What causes this and why has it waited a decade
before acting this way?

On 18 Jul 2006 20:00:27 -0700, "dwight" >
wrote:

>Our 1996 Saturn has 127K miles and we've had it since it was new. This
>year for the first time the electric fan -- twice this summer -- has
>remained on after the engine is shut down. Today it ran fo about three
>minutes in the garage. What causes this and why has it waited a decade
>before acting this way?


My 1996 saturn did that near the end, was was 'totaled' in a crash.

imho:

As you shut off the engine, the coolant system stops flowing, but heat
is still migrating out of the engine cylienders into the coolant. So
the engine needs additional cooling at shut down, sometimes. Depending
on air temperature, and how much heat is left in the engine,
contributes to teh time the fan is on. If your engine is operating at
a higher than normal tempeature, and you haven't changed your driving
habits, I would recommend getting your cooling system evaluated.

My 96 saturn had a habit of 'gunking' up in the cooling system, and
need flushes. The gunk/slime would coat the insides of the piping
slowing dow the cooling system's heat transfer. So the fan sometimes
would kick on for me often in the summer time.

hth,

tom @ www.CarFleaMarket.com

On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:42:42 -0400, Tom The Great >
wrote:

>My 96 saturn had a habit of 'gunking' up in the cooling system, and
>need flushes. The gunk/slime would coat the insides of the piping
>slowing dow the cooling system's heat transfer. So the fan sometimes
>would kick on for me often in the summer time.


There is a realy easy perminate cure for this, run 60/40 or 70/30
antifreeze instead of 50/50 . Regardless of manufactures
recommandation, 50/50 does not cut it long in a aluminum block and
galvanic reaction cause the slime you see. less water and more
antifreeze will stop this. SOme are really stuck on 50/50 though.
-----------------
The SnoMan
www.thesnoman.com

Keep that radiator clean, flush it out if it is gunked or has never been
flushed out in a long time. I add some Water Wetter by Redline products into
my radiator, it is supposed to help keep temps down.

marx404

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 07:13:35 -0400, "marx404" > wrote:

>Keep that radiator clean, flush it out if it is gunked or has never been
>flushed out in a long time. I add some Water Wetter by Redline products into
>my radiator, it is supposed to help keep temps down.


Again if you have a high consentraton level you can forget all this. I
can show you a raditor that has not been flush for 9 years and it has
70/30 and it is clean as a whistle and overflow tank looks like new
too with no stains at all. I can also show you a 52 year old JD
tractor that has not been flushed for 20 years (it sees about 30 to 40
hrs a year of usage still) and it is clean as a whistle too. It has
about 80 to 90% antifreeze in it (because old radiators are really
rare and expensive so you want to protect them well) and it never run
hot on the warmest days to and bush hoggin when it is 90 is a workout
for cooling system.
-----------------
The SnoMan
www.thesnoman.com

Please post those photos...

"SnoMan" > wrote in message
...
> Again if you have a high consentraton level you can forget all this. I
> can show you a raditor that has not been flush for 9 years and it has
> 70/30 and it is clean as a whistle and overflow tank looks like new
> too with no stains at all.

> I can also show you a 52 year old JD
> tractor that has not been flushed for 20 years (it sees about 30 to 40
> hrs a year of usage still) and it is clean as a whistle too.
> -----------------
> The SnoMan

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:11:33 GMT, "Bob Shuman"
> wrote:

>Please post those photos...
>
>"SnoMan" > wrote in message
.. .
>> Again if you have a high consentraton level you can forget all this. I
>> can show you a raditor that has not been flush for 9 years and it has
>> 70/30 and it is clean as a whistle and overflow tank looks like new
>> too with no stains at all.
>
>> I can also show you a 52 year old JD
>> tractor that has not been flushed for 20 years (it sees about 30 to 40
>> hrs a year of usage still) and it is clean as a whistle too.
>> -----------------
>> The SnoMan
>


Always a unbeliever. I will post some tuff on my site about this in
the future. I stopped using 50/50 about 20 years ago and stopped have
radiator problems to when I did.
-----------------
The SnoMan
www.thesnoman.com

Hi Dwight -

My 1995 SC2 did this once.
ONCE.
I think I was replacing the coolant and thought the tank got topped off
- but there was still a lot of air in the system, I left the engine
running with the a/c off so the engine continued to idle until the
cooling fan came on. Then I turned the engine off and the fan kept
running. It ran for about three minutes but after getting the coolant
level back up it never did it again.
It apparently had just gotten very, very hot.
-WaV


dwight wrote:
> Our 1996 Saturn has 127K miles and we've had it since it was new. This
> year for the first time the electric fan -- twice this summer -- has
> remained on after the engine is shut down. Today it ran fo about three
> minutes in the garage. What causes this and why has it waited a decade
> before acting this way?