Over heating car and electric fan not working... way to hardwire it?

[Scot @ SJIRadio]

My 325is has been starting to over heat or atleast run hot lately - I immediatley pull over and let it cool when this happens - and I noticed that the electric fan is not even blowing on the rad. I have a feeling a thermostat is broken somewhere -so in the mean time (long weekend) I want to hard wire the electric fan to a relay somewhere so its always on.

Any idea where I would find the lead wires to this fan?

Thanks in advance! I 'm quite new to this car.


PS- I'm going to have the car properly checked out on Tuesday after thanksgiving long weekend, this is just going to be a temp fix.

[BavarianM52]

first things first you have to make sure that the fan even works any more. You nead to send 12v to the fan with fan grounded to make sure it runs, if not then you def nead a fan. also check your fuses, i foreget the exact numbers but I believe they are 16 and 41? Then there should be 2 relays in the fuse box, one controls high speed and the other controls low. Check to make sure they are getting 12v to the solenoid and switch. you can also do a resistance check between the switch side of the relay to the fan connector. Dont foreget about your coolant temp sensor on the side of the res. If worse comes to worse and the fan is ok, you can jump the temp switch connector if the switch is bad, then the fan would stay on all the time while the car is running.

[Scot @ SJIRadio]

Awesome - I'll give that a whirl.

I think I have alot more issues than that too- the overflow chamber is leaking somewhere- I already replaced the cap, but I'm still getting collant in that area of the engine bay when I drive the car reasonably hard - 4-5k rpm.

[Scot @ SJIRadio]

By-passed any and relays by hooking into the fan motor directly and it runs fine. Any idea what the draw is on this unit? I want to hook it into another relay somewhere but not sure where.