Anyhow I’ve bought an FTO (non mivec), it's the first time I've ever owned a Mitsi hand gernade. I bought it to teach my two sons to learn to drive in.
The wifes been re-assured it's only a 2 Litre V6, it'll be fine to teach the kids to drive in,
Basicly I'm a tight prick and I didn’t want to buy a cheap arse over priced Civic with a squillion k's on the clock or something like that, besides the price was right for the FTO too.
I’ve already done a heap of work to it with stuff I learnt directly off this site such as front sway bar bushes to start with.
Cut to the chase, it’s got an overheating issue, a weird one this one is.
Thinking it's your standard coolant system neglect / blockage
- Thoroughly flushed and checked flow in the radiator
- Thoroughly flushed and checked flow in the heater core.
- Top and bottom radiator hoses checked.
- Reservoir tank cleaned, flushed and checked for flow.
- Thermostat replaced. (it's true the jigger direction does matter)
- Hoses from thermostat housing into throttle body and back cleaned, flushed and checked for flow.
No coolant leaks and no coolant loss. (marked the reservoir and it moves up and down as you would expect when driving and randomly stopping to check, eventually it returns to the mark once cooled down for a few hours)
No water in oil and no oil in water, no bubbling in water.
I now think it’s an electrical fault.
- Temperature control sensor replaced. (lge one, new from mitsi over charge dealers)
- Radiator fan relays swapped with others (three times)
- Fuse / relay box terminations, under side of this were all checked for good positive terminations.
- Electro cleaned all terminations.
The problem.
Car gets warm and sits just under half way on temp gauge okay, sits here for ages barely moving a mm but eventually it starts to get hot, on the gauge it nearly goes into the “H” (I’m not game to let it get all the way) Anyhow when I pull over and check I’ve noted the radiator fans were not running, so I hit the air con on and both fans start up okay, temp gauge cools down.
So this is where I’ve got up to in diagnosing the fault (all of the above rant, call it a nOOb novel).
It appears or so I reckon so far to be an electrical / control issue.
See randomly the radiator fans just stops working, it heats up, as before, pull over and turn the air con on and wait till it’s cooled down enough.
For sh*ts and giggles I decided to turn the air con off one day only to find the fans keep going
, I'd expect this as it’s still hot but they wern't running in the first place.I’m not too sure where to head on this one, it's if the control side of the radiator fans are the issue but I can’t seem to nail it yet.
I haven’t metered the temperature control sensor yet to make sure it’s gone low (it’s hot I know that)
What else would be in circuit to tell the ECU to turn the bloody fans on?
How could I check to see if the ECU is doing it's thing?
Wood for the trees..... so I've posted up what I've done so far. Any ideas, thoughts suggestions?
If it was a fuse, would the fans run when the air con is turned on?
) for weeks chaseing an ABS fault. In toyotas the DIY is short two pins 4 & 13 on the OBDII port and then read the flashing codes from the engine light, the problem was it gave me two codes but I couldn't work out what bleemin way around it was, sad I know. 
I'm not looking forward to that, stacking myself even thinking about it just quietly.
