fun tracing previous owners repairs

[hermit]

been working on my Festiva now that it is nice enough to be out there daily . i've been trying everything to get my festy to stop over-heating and missed the most simple problem.. the previous owner rewired the rad fan onto a switch thats under the dash. and thats the reason why it wont come on haha...

so I made a trip to the Pick'nPull and got a new rad fan wire and fixed the problem. One small problem finished, many to go!

I think it may need a headgasket change though, not looking forward to that ><

[MONSOON]

Yeah its always fun when a previous owner rather than fix a simple problem half ****s it to get it going. Thats fine for a temp fix to get you home or whatever. But to leave it like that is just :tard:

[Festiva_tunner]

good that you found the problem - its always nice when someone "fixes" something and you have to figure out what they did. Wireing is always the worst to. One thing I've done on mine is draw a wiring diagram and label what wire changes to what color when I make a repair or do some custom mod. I make a copy of the diagram from my factory book and then make the changes to the diagram then file it back in the book so I have it for future mods or repairs.

[FB71]

^^^ that's why I keep old harnesses. I strip out a piece of the same color-code wire for repairs/ mods.

[Tim]

Gotta love the homemade repairs that are more complex/ineffective than the part they were meant to replace...

I had a similar setup with my fan involving 8 gauge wire and a giant welding clamp. I guess it was too hard to go to the junkyard, pocket a temp switch, and install it? The proper repair cost me $2 in admission to the yard and a half hour of my time.

Just be glad the wiring on our cars doesn't rot, like it did on my Volvo 740. THAT was a nightmare to repair!


-Tim

[JumboShrimp]

when i got my metro, the guy had the down pipe held on by a C clamp....:scratch:

[SimonTuffGuy]

I had the same issue with Casper... The PO (DJ) passed away, and he purchased it not too long before that from another member on the board. The original member was the person who put the car together, hacked the wiring harness together and for some reason something in the car blew and wouldn't run for DJ.

I ended up swapping a full new harness in, since I didn't feel like tracing down the problem with whatever harness the PO had in there.

Glad you got it sorted out... I need want to do a manual override on my fan. Have it come on when it needs to be, but have a switch that I can make it turn on when I feel like it needs to be.

[graywolf_14]

OMG wow not to bring up the past or bad feelings but this is honestly the first I knew about DJ... He was a great guy always willing to answer my questions and help out. I kept wondering why I never seen any updates to his cardomain page or anything. He will be missed alot

[TominMO]

Overheating?!

i've been trying everything to get my festy to stop over-heating ><

If anything, these cars tend to run too cool. Maybe your rad is clogged, or you have a thermostat that is stuck partially closed.

You shouldn't even need a fan, unless you're idling it for a long time. I took the fan off my 91 Subaru Loyale ( it was driven by the water pump pulley & I wanted to free up some horsepower/save on gas) and it ran fine--just made sure to not idle it too long.