Hey I just bought a 94 accord ex, as a fixer upper. The one issue I'm having is the temperature gauge in the cluster is not reading/working at all, and neither of the fans will start up automatically. I drove the car around for about 15 minutes to try and heat up the engine to get the fan to start but it won't. All of the other gauges in the dash work. So assuming the gauge itself is not broken any ideas on what I can check on?

bleh signature where are you?

 

If you create a signature, you ALSO have to browse around the settings for a check-box that says something like "DISPLAY the signature". Don't know why it's set up like that...

First of all, is there a thermostat installed? It might be that some misguided mechanic decided to remove the thermostat. Or it's stuck open.

Under the distributor, there's 2 sensors screwed into the head. One of them has only 1 wire, that's the sender for the dashoard temperature gauge. Unplug it, and short the wire to ground. Turn the key ON and watch the gauge. If it begins climbing, TURN OFF THE KEY BEFORE IT GETS ALL THE WAY. You can burn up the gauge in your cluster if you allow it to get too high.

If the gauge doesn't begin climbing, then you have a wiring problem, or a bad gauge. If it DOES climb, then you have a bad sender.

Now for the fans... There's a 2-wire sensor in the thermostat housing (LOWER radiator hose). Unplug that & jumper between the 2 wires. Key ON, that should make both fans run. Check that out & let us know what happens.

 

Ah thanks alot. Now I have a direction to move in as far as checking out these problems. Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on it soon!

 

Ok so I found the problem with the temperature gauge. It was the connection between the sender unit and wire.

As far as the fans go I hot wired the fan directly to the battery and it didn't cut on at all. The condenser fan doesnt cut on at all either nor does the compressor start up. Though I'm not too worried about that for now. Just trying to get the radiator fan to start up. So new radiator fan is the next step?

 

ok so the 2 wire sensor u r talking about is near the back of the head, closer to the firewall? and is not the 2 wire sensor that is near the distributor and next to the sender unit for the temp gauge?

 

The 2-wire sender near the distributor is for the fuelinjection controller to measure temperature. #19 in the picture below. The gauge sender is #15.

The (similar looking) 2-wire "sender" in the thermostat housing is your fan switch. Follow the LOWER radiator hose back towards the firewall, there you'll find the T-stat housing. The fan switch is #17 in the picture. It actually is located where #16 is shown, but #16 must be for a different year, different version, something like that.


Jumper together the 2 wires for #17, and that should make BOTH fans run. You've already put battery voltage to the fans and they don't run, so you've already demonstrated that the fan motors are bad.

Then, just for complete information...
The last sensor (#18) at the upper radiator hose, is the other fan switch that's responsible for the fan running AFTER you shut off the engine.

 

Thank you so much. I'm good at bolting stuff on and all that but electronics blows my mind. I did get the temp gauge to work, but it seems like i guess theres a short in the wiring for it near the connector, cuz it keeps cutting off and now i cant get it to work again. So just for my info how would i ground that wire? what do i do. And as far as the fans go I do need to replace the fans/motors?

 

Temp gauge...
If the needle drops down sometimes, that's an "open circuit" meaning the wire is broken somewhere.

A "short circuit" would be for example the insulation is rubbed off the wire and it's touching some metal in the car. That would cause your gauge to climb right to the top.

"Shorting" that wire to ground just means unplugging the wire and touching it to a peice of metal like the engine itself. If you say the gauge sometimes works & sometimes goes down to the bottom; then you're looking for a broken wire "open circuit" or a loose/dirty/corroded plug somewhere in that wire.

Fans...
You said you ran wires directly from the battery to the fan motor?? If that didn't make the fan run (each fan separately), then the fan motor is dead. I don't know if you buy just the motor, or the fan assembly with blades & shroud.

Testing with power directly to the battery - because it fails to run - eliminates the need for the other stuff like jumpering the fan switch.

 

ah ok. well thanks again. I'll work on it some more. Hope you got the time to help me out some more later!

 

Alright my friend who is good with electronics helped me look at the car today. We found a wire broken off of the radiator fan harness. And he tested the motor on the fan and its good. So we are going to try and fix that. He also used a signal tester on the temperature gauge sender wire, and it showed a very weak signal. which he said is probably because something is not grounded. so hopefully when we fix this wire it might solve the temp gauge problem? idk . . .