During recent cold weather, I turned on the fan (climate control), and it started making a clicking noise under the hood. I tracked that down to the passenger side fan that is mounted on the radiator. The sound was somewhere near there anyway. It was a terrible noise, like something was in the fan (the one on the radiator), but nothing was.
Yesterday, I added some coolant because it seemed low. After that, I turned on the fan and, after a few seconds, the noise came back. I switched it off. I drove a little ways thinking I would let the coolant circulate. Then I switched it on again and got a huge drop in rpm (and power).
So, I switched it off. Today, I was driving and switched it on. Same thing happened. Then, as I was pulling out of a store parking lot (going slow), I tried it again and it immediately killed the motor. I turned off the fan, and the motor started back up.
I think that something is broken about that fan under the hood, but what do I know? Something terrible is happening to the ‘electricity’ part of the car is pretty clear.
The car runs fine otherwise. I did see a weird ‘flickering’ on the digital odometer a couple of times, which might be related–it has never happened before. Twice, after it was warm after I added the fluid, the car ‘started hard’–I cannot explain what that means other than it was different from the ‘smooth’ way it usually starts. Otherwise, it has started ‘smoothly’ whether it is cold or warm.