My 1996 Honda was overheating, took it in for repairs. Was told that the computer which governs the cooling fans was not working. I live in Mexico and the cost for replacement of that computer is more than the value of the car. The mechanic suggested that I could just disconnect that computer, so that I will not longer hear the sound of the fans going on after I turn off the ignition. He assured me that this is not a dangerous thing to do. Does anyone else have experience with this kind of problem?
Your narrative does not make much sense. The car overheats because of cooling fans not working. How does disabling the fans help? I seriously doubt that there is a “computer” that controls the fans and does nothing else. I will continue one the assumption that the fans are not controlled properly.
If the fans are not coming on because of a control issue, you could have the mechanic hook up a manual switch for the fans. Just don’t forget to turn them off or the battery will be dead. To avoid that problem, a relay could be introduced into the circuit to run the fans only when the ignition is in the “run” position. That would be pretty easy. Lastly, if there is a convenient place to tap into and insert an add-0n temp sensor in the coolant flow, you could control a fan that way.
Hi! Part of the problem is language. I am in Mexico, my Spanish is basic at best, the mechanic was explaining all of this in Spanish. Now that the computer has been disabled I do not see the temp gauge going up. The cooling fans were OVERworking, they used to go on and on for a long time, I do not know enough about this car to explain further. Thanks for your comment.
There is still something being lost in the translation.
To say that the engine was overheating because the cooling fan(s) were running too often is…just plain wrong.
The only place where this would make sense is in some type of Bizarroworld where people spend all of their money in order to become rich, where people starve themselves in order to gain weight, and where people keep their brake pedal firmly depressed in order to make their car go faster.
If you give some thought to what you have told us, you should realize that this scenario makes absolutely no sense. The mechanic may have fixed the car, but he definitely did not cure an overheating problem by disabling the cooling fans.
Your car engine has fan SWITCHES (A and B) which close when the coolant gets to a certain temperature. The fans are turned on by the fan relays controlled by the Radiator Fan Control which is controlled by the engine computer. The fan switches, A and B, have to be closed for the fans to run. There must be a reason for this odd setup.
There is an engine coolant temperature sensor. Does the engine computer use its input to control the Radiator Fan Module? I can’t tell from just the wiring diagram.
The Radiator Fan Module is probably the “computer” you are talking about. You should be able to get a salvage yard in the USA to send you a Radiator Fan Control Module for a few dozen dollars. You do have UPS, don’t you?
07/20/2009 I reread his description of the problem for the severalth time. Perhaps, buzzard34, could come back and take half of his paragraph away for it to start to make sense. For him, it’s not the language, it’s the logic flow. [Is it confusing that something is controlled by something that is controlled by something that controls that? I’m not sure.]
Whatever happened to our friend and his overheating Odyssey that was supposedly cured of overheating by deactivating the cooling fans?