Car is not running and cold but fan is on

[terry_01vw]

So I walked out to my car this morning and I thought I heard some noise that didn't exactly sound like the wind, turns out the rad fan is on. Thankfully the battery wasn't completely drained and the car started right up but I shut it off right away and the fan is still running. I don't know how long it's been on but does anyone have an idea how I can fix this before I have to hook up the battery charger to keep the battery alive?

 

[rhskcdn]

Sounds like something in the fan control chain. See the A4 fan troubleshooting thread.

 

[terry_01vw]

Nothing in there answers my question, unless I am missing something. My problem is not that something quit running, it's that it is running when it is not supposed to. I'll try to explain as well as I can but I haven't really looked into anything in detail because of all that darn rain, I hate rain!! The car sat there all night and when I went out, I opened the hood and those two fans behind the rad were running, I had not turned the car on yet and the keys were not in the ignition yet. I guess that's volkswagen way of wishing me a happy birthday lol . Ah well, If I can't fix this problem with a wrench, I'll fix it with rum and cokes and cake!

 

[rhskcdn]

I'd start by pulling the correct fuse (read the pdf) and seeing if the fan resets, checking your main ground for corrosion (i.e. under the battery) and then testing as described in the A4 Coolant Fan Testing PDF in the above thread. Which fan is on and is it spinning quickly or slowly? My guess is the termoswitch from radiator is the problem or a relay somewhere in the chain is stuck. The 3 leads from the temp sensor go to the fans as 1st and 2nd speed. Pin 2 come from battery thru s180 fuse, pin 1 is low speed, pin 3 is high speed. It's all in the PDF.

 

[terry_01vw]

Thanks for the great advice, I will go check on that. The 2 fans were spinning quickly. Unfortunately I wasnt home all afternoon and evening yesterday and now the car is completely dead soit will take a while before I can actually check to see if im fixing the problem because I have to charge the battery first

 

[rhskcdn]

No worries. I recall that my problem was initially intermittent and I spent a week pulling/inserting the fuse each time I stopped/started the car to avoid having a dead battery. I'm pretty sure it was the thermocouple/thermoswitch that I replaced. It did take a little detective work with the multimeter trying to figure out which switch was faulty.

 

[jsarg419]

Know this thread is old but I had the same problem today. The car went through the auto carwash yesterday and the problem started this am. I removed both plugs from the fan control module and noticed water in them dried both and coated the inside with dielectric grease and they now work perfectly.