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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
