ericdwong

Anybody modify their car so the radiator fans will continue to run after the car is off? I notice hondas do this, and I hate to imagine how hot it gets under the hood without it after you park your car. Especially now when its hot as ***** during the summertime...

njmaxseltd

iTrader: (19)

My Prelude did that. There was a sensor in the cooling system, if the car's cooling system got very hot after the car was turned off, like on a hot summer day after pushing it a bit, the fans would kick on a few min. after the car was shut off and run till it braught the temp down. So to mod the max, you would need to tap into the cooling system with another temp switch wired directly to power.

Lime

I was wondering about this myself, my ghetto '89 accord did this...I wish the fans would stay on a little while, but that probably involves a bit of work.

Eric L.

Yeah I've always wondered why my Maxima did not do that. My old VW did that all the time. I always assumed that the Maxima's engine was very efficient and didn't get hot enough to cycle the fan while the engine was off. But if the manufacturer didn't add that feature, it is probably not needed, as Nissan tests their cars in the desert, and if it survived there, it will survive under normal conditions. It's 100 degrees everyday for me here and I've had no problems at all with overheating. Heat soak, well I'm not too worried about that either. If I let the engine heat soak for 30 minutes and restart the car, the needle never rises above the normal halfway (a little below that actually) mark.

PeteB

Heh, heh, you have the very common misperception that the temp gauge gives you an accurate reading of the temperature. In fact, almost all modern temp gauges are basically three-position switches: cold, normal, and overheated. As the gauge briefly moves among these three states, it's probably more or less accurate, but when it sits in the middle position, that can cover a pretty broad range of temperatures. I don't think that the gauge will ever sit in the almost-overheating zone, it'll just pass through it on its way to the top.

It's a bit of psychological gamesmanship on the part of the manufacturers. The default normal temp indicator is usually a bit below the middle in order to ease your concern that it's close to overheating. If the temp gauge really did reflect all the gradations of temperature, most people would freak if they saw the gauge sitting midway between the middle and the overheating zone. Yet that's probably the actual temperature of your engine when it's sitting in traffic on a hot summer day. It shouldn't cause a problem for your engine, but it sure would affect the faith you have in it!

Sport Compact Car had a writeup on this issue sometime in the past couple of years.