This is on my 83 gl wagon 4wd. Over the last month i have noticed that the temp gadge in the car will go up to a certin point and stop. Slowly that point where it stops has been going down. Last week not knowing if the two systems were connected i drove the car hard for a while and thought the gadge showed barely over the bottom line I knew i should be at least around the middle line. Then checked while car was still running and the radiator fan was not on. I tested the fan and it runs fine with 12v of power. The radiator, fan, and water pump are all only three months old, so i feel that no damage has accured by overheating. I replaced the fan switch in the radiator but that didnt change any thing. Currently i wired the fan to run with the key in the on position. I was wondering where the gadge's sending unit is or any other ideas on why these are not working right.

On another maybe connected not by battery gadge will read less then ten volts when i start and raise to around 12 when running, but my battery reads 12.6 with the car off and 13.3 when runing when i test with a multimeter.

Any ideas on ether of the situations would be great.

Thanks

David

check for the small braided wire

that grounds the radiator.

 

sounds like the dash gauge for the voltage may be

out of calibration.

Wire your multimeter to a cig lighter plug

and compare.

It's possible your gage may be correct, your engine is not heating up all the way. Could be the thermostat is faulty (happened to me)..use only genuine Subaru thermostat.

I'll check the ground on the radiator, just by feeling the hoses and such in the radiator it seems to be heating up fine. The more i dig the more i find weird stuff in the wiring. I only get around 4.5v out of the cig outlet.

 

thanks for the idea i'll give it a shot.

David

1983 gl wagon 4wd

im having similar problems, my fan wont kick on when its suppose to. but someone ran a hot wire from the battery to the fan and run it off a toggle switch. i cant figure out why my fan wont kick on. Now, i have two therm switch's on my radiator only one is hooked up though. kinda weird. im just goin to install a toggle switch into the dash. i rather control my fan anyway. its the unplugged wires up by the relay center that's bugging me??

Edited December 1, 201114 yr by noob2soob22

check your other thread, look for the wire on the top of the radiator. Yu should remove the toggles and extra wires, and make your troubleshoots first before any electrical modifications.

 

you can make a toggle to act as the ground for hte thermoswitch. You woud run it in parallel, and manually override it to come on when you want, but you can never leave it off becausse the thermoswitch (should) make the fan come on anyway.

ok the wire on the top of the radiator is gone i can see where ther was a ground fastened to frame near the radiator. i will upload pics.

now when tracing i should only have to trace from the fan to the thermo switch, corect?

not that complicated, its all within the 2-3 foot stretch?