Troubleshooting cooling fan

[DMC-Ron]

Left fan issue is resolved! Thanks to Dave for lending me the extractor tool and some spare pins. And thanks to everyone else that provided advise, photos, and suggestions. Here's the final fixes:

Used Dave's extractor tool. Took a little wiggling but it worked great getting out the burnt cooling fan pins.
P4233635.jpg

Crimping the new connector pin:
P4233656.jpg

Once the wiring was all sorted, I installed Toby's low amperage fans:
P4303698.jpg

I LOVE the new fans. They are much quieter and have a much nicer tone. Once the new fans were in and working, I installed Dave's fan fail relay (had just stuck with the fuse jumpers while sorting out the problem with the original fans). I really like Dave's fan fail relay. It delay sequences the fans. So what you get is the first fan starting, getting to full speed, then after a short delay, up comes the second fan. Sounds kinda cool! Plus the relay lights up the fan warning light should a fan (or fans) fail. Or it should if my fan fail light was functional. Sadly, it's not. So, another thing to sort!!

By the way, the fans were installed during an Northwest tech session with the help of Toby. You do the work but Toby looks things over and offers suggestions and advice. Now an then he just can't stand it and he'll grab a wrench. The tech sessions are great!

One last thing that was surprising about the original fans. They are four bladed fans but the four blades are not evenly spaced. Just seemed a bit odd:
P4303709.jpg

Anyway, thanks again for all who helped.
Ron

[cis6409]

Well done!
great to hear it resolved very satisfying when you get to the bottom of annoying problem like that ..


Shane

[DMC-Ron]

Turned out the non-functional fan fail indicator was simply a burned out bulb. Replaced it with an LED version and with Dave's electronic fan fail relay, I now have a real fan fail warning system. If I disconnect a fan (tested both) the fan fail light will give continuous single blink. If I disconnect both fans, it does a double blink. Very nice! And I think the blinking will draw more attention than just having a light come on. My only wish would be for a way to test the indicator. I could add a button back in the relay compartment but it would take a bit of wiring. I don't know if the module has a diagnostic method to trigger the indicator for test purposes. In any case, I'm pleased to have something that actually monitors the fan operation and will provide a noticeable alert if there is a failure.

Now on to a new issue. I ordered and received some white LED bulbs to replace the climate panel's general back-lighting. Ordered the bulbs from superbriightled.com and, by the way, of 5 bulbs, 2 were bad (first time for SBLED). The LED bulbs are polarity sensitive, but they come with the case negative so they work fine for this application. Here's the issue: With the climate face-plate removed I had easy access to the four bulbs used for back-light, but when I tried to remove the bulb the socket just pushed back. Are the back-light bulbs intended to be pulled out from behind and replaced similar to the way the three warning lights pull back from the face-plate? If so, can this be done without removing the console cover?

Thanks,
Ron

[cis6409]

remove the bulb the socket just pushed back. Are the back-light bulbs intended to be pulled out from behind and replaced similar to the way the three warning lights pull back from the face-plate? If so, can this be done without removing the console cover?

Yes. and no for the second part .

remove the cover - (the center housing tunnel I mean )so you can see more easily what your doing and you don't accidentally pull off another wire or vacuum hose going to the mode switch - it can be a real rats nest of wires back there with all the connections to the switches to navigate around them to get to the illumination bulbs
But shouldn't be too much hassle



Cheers
Shane