PCMusicGuy

So I noticed my car overheating on the way home yesterday (got over 260 degrees). It was climbing rapidly at stop lights and got cooler going down the road. I traced it to the fan not working, and when searching on the forum I was lead to check the plug.

Just like numerous others, my connector has melted as well, but my car is 100% stock and it is an outer pin that failed. Most of the time, it seems to be the center pin that melts and it is mostly on cars with a tune. Are there any other cases of a completely stock failure like this? Has anyone had this fixed at the dealer? Would they try and replace needless things or would they order new connectors and splice into the existing harness?

Thanks.

KENS80V

The simplest (and cheapest) way of fixing this and to make sure it doesn't happen again is to eliminate the connector and crimp/heat shrink the wires together.

HOXXOH

You can just bypass the bad wire and plug the connector in for the other two. That way if the fan ever needs to be replaced, you'll only have to cut one wire instead of three. The problem of the dealer doing the fix is that the connector they use/supply for a replacement (about $43 IIRC) has even smaller gauge wires than OEM and they'll charge a minimum of $100 to do the 10 minute job of installing an inferior part. The connector is not well sealed from water, so it has a higher than average failure rate and it's not limited to just Vettes.

PCMusicGuy

Thanks for the info on the dealer work. I picked up some crimp connectors today so hopefully that will do the trick with some heat shrink.

PCMusicGuy

Bit of an update. I've replaced the connector with crimped connectors and has been working since then. Today though, My fan did not seem to want to run without turning the A/C on. My coolant temps showed 220 and the fan was off. I turned on the A/C and the fan turned on, but it wasn't spinning more than 20%. There is obviously some kind of problem, but I don't know what it is.