Radiator Fan

My radiator fan is not turning on in my 2002 Jeep Liberty. The belts look fine and it turns by hand. My radiator overheated last summer but since has been fixed now my fan doesn’t work, but hasn’t overheated. No parts of the the radiator or fan were removed. We fixed a part in the water pump this past sunday and when we had the engine running for about 15 minutes, the fan did not turn on or even act like it was going to try. Any suggestions of what the issue could be?

If your car isn’t overheating, how do you know that the rad fan needs to be turning on? If your “summer” weather is anything like ours this summer, it’s cool enough that it might not need to.

Does the fan turn on when you turn the AC on?

Does this have a clutch-fan??

Vehicles with clutch fans…the fan won’t be spinning much when the engine is cold. There’s a coil inside the clutch that heats up … and then locks the fan in so it will spin.

I just asked our friends at google what a 2002 Jeep Liberty fan assembly looks like.
The pictures show it to be an electric fan…

At idle, the engine may not get hot enough to operate the fan for quite a while and if there is wind the fan may not come on at idle. Drive the car until it warms up then park it out of the wind and see if the fan comes on now and then.

If it never turns on in any situtation and it is an electric (rather than belt driven) fan, here’s some ideas

  • the electrical connector to the fan motor may have come undone or is corroded or otherwise not making a good low resistance connection. I had this happen to my Corolla one time, the connector happens to be located in a place where battery acid from a leaking battery will drip on it. My battery leaked, the connector got corroded, and how I discovered all this was the fan would never turn on.

  • the fan motor is burned out.

  • the temperature switch has failed. I had this happen too. The fan on the Corolla turns on when the coolant temp reaches a certain level. And it does so because there’s a temperature activated switch in the coolant path. When this switch closes, the fan turns on. But this switch can fail, and the fan will never turn on. (On newer cars this function is usually done by the ECM monitoring the coolant temp sensor, and turning on a relay, rather than a separate coolant temp switch. In that case the problem would either be the ECM, the temp sensor, or the relay.)

We did run the engine for a long period of time and drove it around town, we still at this point don’t know why it is not coming on. And yes we ARE NOT over heating. This is why we are asking this question because the things the are happening DO NOT make sense. We have had 3 consecutive days where temps reached to almost 90 drove the car around look at houses and yard selling and still nothing. I guess we will just take it in. Thanks all for your help.

If you have a wiring schematic that would be helpful. You have the fan itself, the relay, the temperature sensor, and the wiring. That’s about it. You can put 12 volts to the fan to see if it works then to eliminate or confirm the fan itself. If not check the wires and relay. Usually turning the AC on will activate the fan though, if it does, its probably the sensor and doesn’t see the temp as high enough to activate the relay to turn the fan on.

If you are driving the vehicle, how do you know if the fan comes on or not?

Does it come on when you turn on the AC? This is a very, very important question that has been asked several times and I don’t see an answer from you.

If it is not overheating, why do you want to take it in? You may be looking for trouble where there is none, and that can get costly.