Author Topic: Fan coming on without engine overheating.  (Read 3115 times)

Offline Cosmo

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Fan coming on without engine overheating.
« on: 18 October 2023, 09:49 »
I have a mk5 gti 2008 which is driving fine and not overheating - all outward signs ok but each time I’ve pulled up and switched off, a really loud and noisy fan starts up after a few seconds and continues for at least 2 minutes.  When the fan is on, I can feel warm air coming out around the engine area.  Garages have said everything is working and that the fan is switching on at the correct time and correct speeds and could only be a faulty sensor.  However I don’t feel this is right.
Any ideas or advice please, as I’m not an expert with engines and don’t want to take it to yet another garage to be told nothing is wrong.

Offline theminty1

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Re: Fan coming on without engine overheating.
« Reply #1 on: 20 October 2023, 07:39 »
I have mk5 2005 tdi with two fans.
Assuming you are a UK car, there is a small one on the left this is for aircon and a bigger one on the right. this is when the car gets hot. There is a controller in the big fan that controls the small fan too. My Golf sounded like an airplane sometime when I stopped at traffic lights. Eventually was stuck in traffic with no working fans. The temperature went past 90 pretty quick that day. I was lucky. At that point replaced the two of them with vw parts £400 for two! fitted myself. No problems since.
Ordinarily if its a cold day no fans will be on, but you may get the big one running but at a slow speed. You might just be able to hear it with no radio on.
You can get aftermarket ones for under £200 but I wanted to go original. Also there are some different makes and reading up about it both fans need to be the same or you can run into problems hence the reason I bought the two from VW.
That was my experience. May be something else with your car though. Good luck!