cooling fan question.

[Bat Out of Hell]

My 96 Monte Carlo with a 3100 is turning the cooling fan on too late. It turns it on when the gauge is at 3/4 mark or above, is this normal? The car runs about at the halfway mark or a little above that, but when it sits and idles the temp creeps up until finally the fan kicks on. I did head gaskets on it recently and i went ahead and replaced the temp sensor with a bwd temp sensor, could that be the problem?

Thanks for your help!!!

[robertisaar]

the guage indicator is notoriously inaccurate, get ahold of someone with a scanner, check what your coolant temps are when the fans kick on using the datastream.

IIRC, GM set them close to ~220*F for the primary fan, close to ~225*F for the secondary.

[Bat Out of Hell]

The car is now kicking the fan on when the gauge hits 3/4 mark and the goes off when it's at the half mark or slightly above. I'm okay with that, but I will locate a scanner to see what it's doing. What brand or type of scanner do you recommend?

[pocket-rocket]

Any one that lets you view live sensor data should work fine for finding out coolant temp.