I have a 97 GC 3.3L with 156k miles I bought new in '96. My youngest daughter drives the van most days. I started noticing that the cooling fan kicks on five minutes or so after the engine has been running even in cool weather (I live in Minnesota) and even when driving at 50 mph or more. The cooling fan does not shut off until I turn the engine off. Even if I only leave the engine off for sixty seconds, it will stay off for about five minutes and then kick on. I have not noticed any coolant leaking on the ground so I haven't checked the coolant level.

A couple weeks ago I changed the cooling fan relay up underneath the drivers side air inlet box next to the radiator thinking that would fix it. Nope. Coolant fan still kicks on after about five minutes and stays on until the engine is shut off.

My daughter reported a week ago that she's not getting any heat from the heater until after 30 minutes or more and it's not much heat at that. This vehicle has always had the mother of all heaters.

I picked up a water pump tonight to install tomorrow thinking that the impeller is no longer moving coolant through the system. But before I go through that repair I thought I'd get some opinions here.

Could the thermostat be stuck open? I wouldn't think that would make the cooling fan kick on and stay on.

Thanks for any advice,
Arizona Mike in Minnesota

 

Yup, I would go with a $10 t-stat before the pump. Could the cooling fan be cooling it so much it won't produce heat? That's a good question.

 

It turned out that it has a pinhole leak in one of the hoses and the radiator was down about 1.5 gallons of coolant. It took about a year for it to go down that low so it's not a big leak. I inspected the water pump and the hoses on that side of the engine bay and they were fine. The car gets parked outside and there is an occasional stain on the driveway near the left front of the engine bay. I'll be on the watch for it since it will get parked in the garage this winter. That should make it easier to locate. But for now filling it up with coolant seems to have resolved all the issues. The vehicle also has the non-functioning horn and cruise control as of a month or so ago so it looks like I get to replace a clockspring.