Hey everyone, first official post, but I have been gleaning tons of information from this site for the past several years. My wife's 97 accord, 2.2 vtec, manual trans has 355,000+ miles on it and is worn, but still (fairly) trusty thanks to all of you.

A few days ago it started to overheat on her but she caught it in time and shut if off. As I was diagnosing it, I first of all found it was low on coolant (my bad. radiator cap was very old and apparently had been letting coolant out for a while) but during the diagnosis I find out that both cooling fans aren't working. I performed the diagnostic steps found here Overheating Troubleshoot for Honda's Cooling System
and everything is electrically good up to the fan itself. Both fans are getting 12V at their connector plugs when they are supposed to (jumper plug at Thermoswitch A at thermostat housing, get 12v at radiator fan; turn on AC get 12V at both radiator and condenser fans) but neither fan actually comes on, ever. I tried jumping juice straight from the battery to each fan and neither came on that way either. This brings me to my question, Is it possible there is something going on that could have burned out both fan motors? Or were they both just very old. I guess I have been unaware of the non-working fans until it came up with the overheating, so it's possible they burned out at seperate times, but I was under the impression that electric motors are pretty robust.

The reason I am posing this question to the collective wisdom of the forum is because I don't want to replace both fan motors then find out something else was going on and burn those up too. Does anyone have any experience with this? A very big thank you in advance. You are all very gracious to take time to answer everyone's questions.

 

Certainly they're failed now, so you need to replace them. If your voltage was spiking high, it seems like other things would fail first, like headlight bulbs. Measure system voltage (at the battery posts) while the engine is running. Turn on the headlights & rev the engine to see if the voltage changes. Should be around 14-ish volts.

Most likely having only one fan running would keep you from overheating, so you might not have noticed when the first one burned out. They're called "radiator" & "condensor" fans but really both fans blow through both radiator & condensor.

 

You may be able to fix the motors. Carbon from the brushes gunks up the bearing and stops the shaft from turning. Disassembling the motor, cleaning out the carbon, and lubing the bearing got another (so far) two year's life out of mine.

 

My experience w/ these motors is simply to replace them. I tried to repair 1-2 and found that brush replacement is very difficult. There is no provision for temporary brush retraction to engage the armature during re-assembly. The one I managed to re-assemble only worked a short time before brushes tumbled again.

These motors are available at reasonable prices on ebay, amazon, et al.

good luck

 

You can hook the brush leads over the brass tabs that are part of the brush holder (see pics), put the motor together, crack it open a bit and, using a very skinny screwdriver or the like, flip the leads off of the tabs. I imagine that's what the tabs are for.

 

more than likely, one of them has been inop for a while and now the other has gone, leading you to believe both failed simultaneously...my. .02 cents

 

Ha ha. When put so plainly, it makes a lot more sense than the crazy possibilites I think up throughout the day. I think you are both right Jim and Jeff; one probably failed a while ago and I only thought to check after the second one failed. I will still check my voltage at the battery while revving the car though, as was suggested. I guess my original thought was that the radiator fan control module may have somehow shown a current spike, but in reality, that module only activates the cooling fan relay which in turn provides battery voltage to the fan now that I think about it. (Gotta love those PDF shop manual wiring diagrams!)

Roader, I had never even thought about cleaning the motors. I might actually give that a shot first, at least try my hand at it, and if i fail i am no worse off (thanks for the pictures by the way, that procedure makes sense). If I can't get them turning again, I can still hit up the online stores and buy them new. Any suggestions on type of grease? All-purpose black grease or white lithium? Thank you all for the quick responses! We should have the fans back up in no time. Then it's on to the AC compressor cycling on and off pretty frequently...

 

Got a gauge set for AC? Overcharging might cause fast cycling? You'll want to measure high and low side pressures, not just one side.

 

Grease: Any of those or even a few drops of motor oil. The toughest part is getting the tabs bent out to separate the motor halves. There was plenty of brush left on my 250K fan but, as you say, the worst that can happen is having to pony up for a new motor. Note that the pics/procedure is for the flat condenser fan motor. I've never taken apart the radiator fan motor which is a conventional, cylindrical motor.