Manual Switch to Turn On Cooling Fans

[jim010]

This took me awhile to do as we were not sure how to do it.  We had to teach ourselves about making circuit boards, using diodes, transistors, relays etc ... in order to make this work. It seemed simple enough, but it really wasn't.

Now there will be those of you that will ask 'why on earth did you bother to do this?'

Answer is - because it is fun. I really like doing this sort of thing, and I hate blank buttons, so we made it a mission to find a purpose for all the blanks. Now we have all blanks with switches that do something.

Now the car never did over heat, but when running at the high end of engine temps, ;the oil pressure at idle was low. Still looking into that one. Seems to be common. Will run thicker oil next time and see what that does. Also there is heat soak with the charging system when that engine bay is hot. Replaced the ground strap and the alternator Y cable. Improved, but heat soak is still there. Alternator checked fine, so still looking at that.

In either case, we had seen that others had installed a switch to turn on the cooling fans manually. This seemed interesting, so we looked at the different ways people had done it both on here and on rennlist. Wanted an OEM switch to do the job, but had no more empty spots left except for a spot next to the headlight switch. On European cars, there is a rotary switch here to level the headlights. So we bought one of these off of ebay and took it apart to see what it would take to repurpose it for fans. Turned out to be a lot more work and know-how than I figured. Whether or not it was needed was not the point - I wanted to see if it could be done, and in the end we did it! It works, and its cool. I like how it turned out! It was fun figuring this one out.

So the rotary switch now has a fan symbol instead of a headlight symbol. It lights up the same colour as the rest of the buttons in the car (we changed all interior button from orange to blue) when the headlights are turned on. To turn on the low speed fans, rotate the dial up and the symbol lights up yellow. Turn it down for the high speed (and the engine fan as well) and it turns red. Getting the lights to work was the hardest part to figure out.

The automatic function of the fans is not affected by this at all. In fact, the indicator lights will turn on when the car switches the fans on, so you can tell when the high or low speeds are on, which is cool.

 

[Mitch Leland]

Well done... Could you post some pictures and description of what you did...  The system worked before so it was just for 'fun' and fill those empty holes on the dash...  I had the same feelings and moved the seat warmer switches up on the horse shoe and filled some empty holes.  Could you run the fans a short while after shutting down to help with the heat soak.

 

I share your need for fun... here's my center dash that I've re-worked to suit my needs..

 

 

 

 

[jim010]

23 hours ago, Mitch Leland said:

Well done... Could you post some pictures and description of what you did...  The system worked before so it was just for 'fun' and fill those empty holes on the dash...  I had the same feelings and moved the seat warmer switches up on the horse shoe and filled some empty holes.  Could you run the fans a short while after shutting down to help with the heat soak.

 

I share your need for fun... here's my center dash that I've re-worked to suit my needs..

 

 

 

 

 

You have the PSE!

 

... I wish I had the PSE ...

 

[Loren]

DIY Tutorial is here: