My two cooling fans started running for no reason. The car had not been driven for hours and the fans just started running. The only way to stop them was to take the battery cable off. The key was out. The vehicle is a 06 Chrysler Town and Country van.
Rodent damage to the wiring? Voodoo? Magic?
Check the fan relay and the radiator temperature sensor. And check for a short in the wiring.
Power to the cooling fan circuit is normally HOT to the battery and controlled either by the ECU and/or a thermo switch which is most likely located in the radiator. I suspect that the thermo switch is closing and causing the trouble.
Another way you should be able to disable the fans is by pulling the fuse for the fans. It should be in the panel under the hood. By doing that you won’t disconnect power to other things in the vehicle that need power while parked. There might be two fuses fo the fans.
You would want to get this fixed if you pull the fuses do it only on a temp basis. The fan normally should come on when you park the car and help the engine to cool down.
When you find the fan fuse, remove the fuse BLOCK and examine the underside for a melt-down and short circuit…Sometimes, a bad connection at this point gets hot enough to melt the plastic fuse holder and create a short…Also, the fans are most certainly controlled by a relay. Locate it, and if the problem happens again, remove this relay while the fans are running and see if that shuts them off. If it does, then the problem is in the low-power relay control circuit…If the fans continue to run with the relay removed, then the fans high-currant wiring is shorted somewhere…