Rad Fan

It 'runs' for 2 minutes then goes off,but will keep doing that for up to half an hour .Never timed the interval between ,YET

The three GTAs in Queensland that I have seen, all have the engine bay fans run for 20 Mins or so. I did not know there was a timer.

We now have 3 Turbos, 1 Atmo, 1 A610, and an A110 in Brisbane!!!

Yes I can now say I've got a GTA turbo properly registered in Brissie.
Replaced the water pump on the weekend - urrrggghhhh!! and the drive to and from the Dept of Transport was the first drive in Aus. - only some few kilometres and accomplished with one eye on the temp gauge. It likes to ease up to highest! It seems to be a liar after a bit of checking of caps, hoses and rads.

Relevant to this topic may be my limited experience - after probably 10 km there and back to the DoT she was operating both engine bay fans for some time. The day was cool and rainy ( I could not survive as usual, in a short sleeved shirt ) but I was keen to verify my cooling systems efficiency given the high readings of the gauge.

After we had done a few short drives tonight ( family ) I checked again and the fans were not running. Do these cars really extract heat as well as it seems, or could I be heading for trouble in Summer??

You've got to keep a sharp eye out for any excessive heat,cooling system and engine bay.Use the SEARCH facility above and you'll see what I mean Many of us in Pommy land have had bad experiences of overheated GTAs. I used to live in Townsville so know the sort of weather it's in for and its not going to like it
Give the whole cooling system a flush and check that all it's components are OK .Take the rad off and give it a thorough flush .Watch out for the rad fans not cutting in ,if the thing gets over halfway between 90 and the red
STOP



With the engine bay its a matter of getting good air flow,there have been many discussions on this site of how best to do this ...........But you'll find that the fans will be coming on a lot ,even when driving at speed and they will keep coming on after stopping until the bay temp has dropped ,try and park its asp in the shade

I've had an ongoing issue with peculiar high temps on my GTA turbo for years now, all following an incident where the car lost some coolant due to a split hose. Even though the gauge didn't even hit the red sector it simply never read the same after that, and I've spent lots of money and time over it - replacing the thermostat, temp gauge, sender unit, rad etc plus even more costly items!

As it is the car will still read mid way between the 90 and the red on hot days under load. I finally decided that the only way to be 100% certain what was going on was to make up a temporary gauge and test it out.

Low and behold the gauge always over-reads and my digital thermometer peaks at exactly 90/91 degrees so far even when it was 30+ outside.

Don't laugh too much but I used a digital meat thermometer used for checking your Sunday lunch. (It was cheap and I could vandalise it). I snapped the probe down to the correct length and silicon sealed it into a brass union (bought for a few pennies from B&Q plumbing section), you can then screw it into the water pump body in place of the normal temp sender unit. See the pic below for the probe and temp unit.





I could then drive around and get live temp readings (I taped the digital readout to the inside of the small rear glass). At the moment I've got the digital sender taped to the side of the dash sender so I can calibrate the dash gauge against real temp - and it really isn't accurate. So it goes nicely with the speedo then

Anyway if anyone wants any more info on checking if their engine is 'well done' or just 'medium rare', then let me know!

I can vouch the dash temp gauge isn't the best. I've had new rad core, hoses, water pump, thermostat and sensor, yet when I'm driving along the temp gauge will often flick past the middle line on the gauge. If I give the side of the dash a tap it'll flick back down to under the line at around 88 degrees. It seems to like to like to move about up and down of it's own accord!

Darren.... Seriously, that is the funniest thing I have seen on this site.
Just genius!

Rupert - I know! I think I should win some sort of prize, I've engineered some wacky fixes for things in the past (try running a lawnmower on a funny fuel mix of methanol, nitro-methane and castor oil) but I reckon this has to take the biscuit.

In all seriousness though, it was the best solution I could think of. The digital gauge is spot on accurate to within a degree and it has a stainless probe designed for harsh conditions. The brass union was a doddle to find and match to the correct size and type of thread too.

Once I've finished dicking around if anyone else wants to borrow it then PM me.