Popping fuses and melting wires

[Bitch'nBronco]

Haha, mechanical fan sounds tempting. My last thermostat burnt up and I didnt know why so I replaced it with the Flexalite thermostat. I'll give the relay a shot and let you guys know how it works out. Thanks again for the help

[chuzie]

If you hooked up the stock gauge/length wires to battery and they got hot, ur fan motor is toast. U can install larger gauge but it will just melt at the case eventually.

Sent from my GS3 on Cyanogenmod with T2.

[Bitch'nBronco]

Is there a way to test the motor with a voltmeter to see if its good?

[broncosbybart]

You'd need an ammeter. Voltage is 12v regardless. Amps is the measure of current flow. If you can find out how many amps the motor is supposed to pull, wire it to the battery with a corresponding inline fuse. Drive it for a good while and see if it pops a fuse.

You can check the amperage draw with a meter if you don't exceed the meters rated amp rating. Most aren't suitable for doing this.

[chuzie]

Yep. Most meters are only rated to 20amps or lower, including my expensive $300 fluke. You will pop the fuse in your meter guaranteed. You can try using inline fuses and stepping them down from 40amps to get you in the ballpark. I know of no fan that exceeds 40amps. Also keep in mind most fuses are buffered appx 10%. So a 40a fuse wont pop until 44a. I use this method when troubleshooting circuits that exceed my meter capability.

[Wickedlester]

Ur thermostat prob burnt up from current draw. It's not designed to run a fan without a relay. If ur gonna run an electric fan it's gonna need to be wired properly anyway. So I wld wire it with ur current fan first then see what happens. Wire it like the diagram and use a 30a fuse. If it blows that u likely have afan motor on its last leg and will need to be replaced.

[Bitch'nBronco]

Maybe this helps. The relay pictured in bottom left is what u need.

Alright, I'm wiring in the relay and I have 2 wires coming out of the electric thermostat. I see the negative going into the left side of the relay, where do I put the positive? Back to the power from the battery?

[Bitch'nBronco]

I got it wired and up to operating temp but I couldn't get the fan to kick on until I bumped my volt meter prong from the thermostat blade to the positive fan blade. I'm going to make a youtbe video to show you what's going on

[Bitch'nBronco]

Here's the video. Sorry for the quality, it wasn't easy to record by myself. I hooked the positive wire from the thermostat to the 12v source from the battery. I can't get the relay to click over, the negative wire on my voltmeter is on the ground and the positive starts at the bottom blade of the relay and I touch each one counterclockwise. When I get to the last one I touched the left and top blade together and the fan kicks on.

http://youtu.be/IXJLd_WlUMI

[Wickedlester]

Thought u had a grounded thermostat. All u need to do is ground the input leg of the tstat. U currently have it wired to 12v pos. that way when the tstat is activated terminal 86 of the relay sees a ground instead of pos.