The day before yesterday, I was driving to KL to fetch Dania from her violin class. While waiting for her, I let the car engine running for about 15-20 mins only to luckily realise that the temp meter needle went past the middle and was creeping toward the upper indicator mark, though not yet up to the danger level. I quickly switched off the engine.
I don't know why this has happened since after I had changed the cooling and aircon fans, the temp meter never even budged past the middle and this is about 2,500 km ago. I started the car again and drove back home with Dania constantly watching the needle. The aircon was switched on and off until at some point, the temp seemed to stabilise as before. Happily, I continued driving until I arrived at the last traffic lights before reaching home.
Then the needle started creeping upwards, and, with aircon switched off I continued driving to the washing bay of the condo where I lived. The engine was really overheating but not to the extent that I had experienced before. On checking the fan, I noticed that both the radiator and aircon fans were not spinning at all. I then parked to let it cool overnight before taking it the next day to the workshop that fitted the fans before.
Since it was already a bit late when I took the car to the workshop - APD - the mechanics there were unable to diagnose what went wrong.
Today, I discussed with chief mechanic Ali who had yesterday checked all the electricals and found them to be in order. There were no signs of over-voltage that could have caused the motors to burn. When he discussed with some Tan Chong mechanics, they told him that, apparently, it's a common failing of the 350Z. Ali was himself not satisfied with the views of the TC mechanics and wished to re-check the system again. So I left him at that and went home.
Update 20/03/2010 Saturday: Today, I collected my car after it being in the APD workshop for a couple of days. Just before this, I discussed with Ali what he had done to rectify the fan problems. He emphasized that there was nothing wrong with the relevant electricals; the fault was due to the fan motors themselves. He described, as agreed in the previous discussion, that he had installed the Nissan Cefiro fans rather than the 350Z fans based on the experience of a 350Z owner who had similar problems until he switched to the Cefiro fans when the problems disappeared. Ali mentioned that shims had to be installed in order to align the fans to match with the original fans. The cost of installation and fans came to RM 700/=. This is considerably cheaper than the so-called UK made Nissan spec fans that he installed and got burned after a couple of months and that cost me RM 1,954/=.
The mileage meter when I sent to APD read 19,330 km or thereabout. I jotted that the mileage when I collected the car was 19,344 km.
I just wonder whether other 350Z owners have similar problems with the car fans. After this problem, I may put off or totally abandon the idea of installing a supercharger.
