ttb

a mile or so before home i take it pretty easy...then i idle her for 2 minutes or so. yet the fan still turns on for 10 mins by itself...what am i doing wrong?

jdhuegel1

Fan recall/fan mod will do that as the temps tend to go up a bit after shut down... and idling and taking it easy wont neccesarily cool the car... but will help cool off the turbos.. Correct me if I'm wrong..

jdhuegel1

Or, did you switch your fans (and are leaving them on)? Or ground the spare fan wire from the ECU? This will make them stay on too...

JConn2299

You want to idle long enough to let the turbos spin down, especially if you've been at high revs shortly before coming to a stop. I have found that 30 seconds to one minute seems to be enough. If I let it idle longer,
say a couple of minutes, the fans will often come on, indicating that the engine temperature has risen. I don't know what fan mod your car may have. Trying reducing your idle time to 30 to 45 seconds and see what happens.

turbojeff

iTrader: (30)

Turbos spin down in one second after you lift the throttle. Despite some people saying they "spool down" or whatever. They DO spin relatively slowly when the car is running even at idle, idling longer won't change the speed that they spin at.

I've got an aftermarket temp gauge, it tells me leaving the car idling in the driveway will heat up the engine to about 210F (with park lights on, 225F without). Driving around 35-40 mph for a min or two will give temps around 190F-195F

My recommendation is just cruise the last couple miles before home and shut it off when you pull in the driveway.

If you've been driving the car hard then it would be a really good idea to let it idle for up to 5min (depending on how hard you drove it) to cool down the turbos, they can be pretty hot, circulating coolant through them will help prevent the coolant from boiling on shutdown.

Jeff

R1Outcast

When I need to cool the turbos, I turn on the heater with the A/C button pressed in. It turns the fans on and helps get excess heat out of the engine bay.

SoCalLove

I thought letting the car idle for about a minute or two was good? I let my timer set for 2:30secs. I manily do highway driving and basically drive about 70mph the whole time. Its about a 15min highway drive.

Is my time too long? Then after my day is over I'll let the fans do their 10min run.

R1Outcast

Do you have a boost gauge? If not, you should get one. You only need to let the turbos cool when you've been using them (hard acceleration). You can do 70mph all day without boosting.

djantlive

I am with jdhuegel1. Idle for 30 sec if you weren't on the boost too much. If you were running fast, idle for 1-5 min, depending on how agressive you were boosting.

If you just sit there idling for longer than a minute, definitely the fan will come on and you should put on the parking light or kick the fan on if you have fan mod. The 10 min is normal and it's telling you that you are creating quite a bit of heat sitting at idle.

ttb

so i guess on one hand you have to idle to let the turbos cool down but if you idle too long than the engine heats up and the fans kick it...i'll try to idle less and see what happens.

ZeroBanger

I try not to boost the last 10 minutes of driving. Then I just let it sit for 30 seconds and turn off. Its a FD, we will all eventually lose the over heating battle, its just a matter of time.

One thing for sure, there are 3 constants in life.

1) Taxes
2) Death
3) Every FD will eventually overheat.

David