1995 850 turbo-can you wire on and off switch for radiator fan

otiswinn · Post by **otiswinn** » 19 May 2023, 20:28

So here's the deal, I wanna go to dairy queen or sonic in my volvo, most days i dont drive drive until early morning or at night most days in fear of my radiator fans coming on by the ecu. Most modern cars keep the radiator fan on to keep temperature to a minimum so my question is can I wire a 3 way switch for off and then the 2 speeds for the fan? Will this affect gas consumption to a noticable degree? Will it drain my battery and shorten the life of it? I wanna keep it as cool as possible when I have to do in town driving this summer, or get stuck in traffic. Any advice feedback is much appreciated and needed at this time because it's getting hot out.

otiswinn · Post by **otiswinn** » 19 May 2023, 20:30

To elaborate and so I'm not mistaken it's not like the fans randomly come on but when I sit in traffic or drive thrus it comes on by itself and I want to cool it down before it even spikes.

Post by **wizechatmgr** » 19 May 2023, 23:24

otiswinn wrote: 19 May 2023, 20:28 So here's the deal, I wanna go to dairy queen or sonic in my volvo, most days i dont drive drive until early morning or at night most days in fear of my radiator fans coming on by the ecu. Most modern cars keep the radiator fan on to keep temperature to a minimum so my question is can I wire a 3 way switch for off and then the 2 speeds for the fan? Will this affect gas consumption to a noticable degree? Will it drain my battery and shorten the life of it? I wanna keep it as cool as possible when I have to do in town driving this summer, or get stuck in traffic. Any advice feedback is much appreciated and needed at this time because it's getting hot out.

Most cars don't run with the fan on all the time, especially at highway speeds where the car moving provides more air than the fan UNLESS the AC is on.

The car is designed by engineers... Until the thermostat opens, the fan generally won't cut on. It isn't just the fan that keeps the car cool.

If you run the fan all the time, you're going to make it take longer to warm up, and likely burn more gas as a result. Kind of like having a bad temp sensor installed. Robert has a V70 and has had 850's in the Arizona desert without needing to supplement cooling to any additional degree.

otiswinn · Post by **otiswinn** » 23 May 2023, 01:55

ok, so what im hearing is that it would be pretty pointlesss and hurt more than help.