Schemes That Gang A-Gley

Every man, it's said, has a plan that will not work. This is useful because it keeps people like me from getting a swelled head.

Today's humbling entry comes to us from the area of automotive transportation.

My little car, Timmy, has been overheating. When I first got him, about nine months ago, his running temp was about one-third up the gauge located in my instrument panel. This, I felt, was an ideal temp.

Then, a month or so ago, two things happened which may or may not be related. On one trip he jumped his idling speed momentarily to double its normal rate, all the way up to 2000 RPM. It soon went down, but I noticed after that incident that his temp would stick around the two-thirds mark. It would, sometimes, drastically descend, which made me feel better, but it was higher than I'd grown used to.

Then, a week or so ago, it started climbing into the red zone and brought me a lot of panic. I quickly figured out that the electric fan that pulls cool air through the radiator wasn't turning and figured that to be the culprit.

I checked that, with an eye toward troubleshooting the problem and re-attaching some loose wire, and soon discovered the wiring under my hood was unlike what the wiring diagram had led me to expect. Evidently someone previous owner had experienced the same thing and had jury rigged the system to work.

I took a few days to think things over and get some electrical wire fixing things, a new soldering iron, various connectors, and testing cables, and with a expectant heart dove back under the hood. I found an old connector sealed with electrical tape and opened it up.

Actually, it's only half a connector. The other half is missing and the wires had been jammed into the remaining half and held in place with the tape. I was hopeful that I could figure out how it should all properly go together, but was simultaneously afraid that I might give it my best shot and fail. It hadn't worked the first time I tried putting the pieces back together (even though I felt it should), but I blamed that on one loose wire that I couldn't figure out where to put.

So, I spent a few days analyzing things out and feeling crappy from the safety of my front room, but today I realized I needed to get things working. In short, the fan is once again turning at breakneck speed and it looks as if my efforts were successful. I drove out and was dismayed to see that the temp is still high, near the red zone.

I don't know if it will stay at that temp or climb even higher, and I'm unwilling to risk it on a longer trip. I know the fan works, and that's what I thought the problem was, and there's good reason to think the thermostat is okay since the upper hose is hotter than hades.

So here I was, all excited about congratulating myself on solving yet another problem, when all I did was eliminate one of the problems. I'm thinking now, of course, that maybe the whole electronic control chip is bad, but I'm not even sure if my car has one.

I guess I could try flushing out the radiator.