I was trying to clean up this monster of a mess of wires where my stereo would be, cutting off the wires that weren't plugged into anything, but it looks like I must have cut one or 2 too many. Now my radiator fan doesn't come on at all and it overheats a little during prologned idle (some one previously rigged it so the fan is on whenever the key is in the 'on' position) I thought since there are so many wires under there and complicated electric thingies scare me I could just hook the fan's ground to the body and the power to the switch that used to turn on my rear lights? That way my car could warm up a little quicker and I could just hit a button when the temp goes above normal. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Oh yeah and also I think that the thermostat has been bypassed or removed so the coolant is always flowing through the radiator, it was an offroad toy after all.

I would put a thermostat in there. Not having one keeps the engine too cold causing bad mileage and its gonna run like crap. Put a 160 degree thermostat in there and drill a few extra holes in the rim that the jiggle pin is in.

 

Yea you can make it powered by a switch and by the thermoswitch in the raidator. There is a thread in the USRM I believe and it has a diagram on how to rig it up to work. So if you forget to hit the switch and you leave the car running the thermoswitch will still turn the fan when it gets hot.