it may be completely normal, but if your car never did this before, do one quick check. if one of your electric cooling fans goes bad, the remaining one will have to work overtime, i.e. after the car shuts down. to check your fans, start the engine and turn on the a/c full cold. pop the hood and look at both fans, with the a/c on both should be running, if one is out, there is a problem. the first one to go is usually the flat one on the left. if either one is off, turn off the engine and jumper the fan to see if its bad. if you dont have a/c you can just jumper each fan to check the motors and rule that out. hope this helps.

 

The small fan that you speak of on 4th gens is the A/C condenser fan. It comes on only when the air conditioning is running. The other fan (the big one) is exclusively for lowering the temp of the coolant; likewise the small one is exclusively for the condenser unit. One could drive all day with the A/C off and the small fan will never come on. It is exclusive to the condenser and will not come on under any other circumstances. The larger fan does all the engine cooling. If your A/C condenser fan does not come on when the air conditioning is engaged, use a 90-93 Integra condenser fan. It is identical to the 90-93 Accord fan and is usually cheaper at a salvage yard. How do I know all this crap? I've replaced both of mine twice.

tc all

 

When the condensor is out front of the radiator, each fan pulls air thru it's section of BOTH the condensor & the radiator. They're radiator & condensor fans in name only.

Different gens had them hooked up differently. Some years they're wired to come on both or none, with either AC or fan-switch. Can't argue with your description for '93 Accords, but it doesn't apply to all years.

Some Civics had the 1/2-size radiator & condensor next to each other, that's the only cars where it's really correct to say this fan is for the radiator - that one's for the condensor.

 

I stand corrected. Thank you.

 

heres the scenerio hondapower: your driving down the road, with the a/c on and the condenser fan is not working. this causes your engine temp to go up slightly since the additional cooling needed for the a/c condenser is not available. you park the car and shut down, the temp sensor senses the slightly higher temp and runs the main fan for a few minutes to lower the temp. that is why i suggested to check both fans the easy way, by turning on the a/c. i can see where i may have caused some confusion by saying "if you dont have ac." i agree the fans are controlled independently by the a/c and engine temp, but i disagree when you say the condenser fan exclusively cools the condenser and the main fan exclusively cools the engine coolant. both fans pull air through both the condenser and the radiator, thus providing cooling for both systems when the a/c is used. they work together to fight the higher temp imposed by the condenser when the a/c is running. a bad condenser fan will cause the main fan to work overtime once the engine has been shut down, again, when the a/c is used. this has happened on both my and my parents honda. heres another tip: when you pick up a fan at the junkyard, check the endplay of the motor shaft by pulling on the fan blades forward and back a bit, a motor with alot of time on it will have excessive endplay, usually 3/8 to 1/4 inch. a new fan has virtually no endplay. so if you have your pick, pick a fan motor with the least endplay they have, it will last longer.

 

thanky thanky!

 

Hi folks! I have one or both fans making a nasty noise when motor gets warm, like in bumper to bumper traffic, only for a short time. I assume, from reading this thread, that this would most likely be the radiator fan? Which fan is on the driver side?

Doesn't matter much, I suppose, since they're both the same price, I just dont want to get both if I dont have to.

Thanks, Spy

 

Just a thought, but maybe there is a short? I know in my old car (old gen civic) the fan would stay on quite a bit. A mechanic told me that it was because there was a short somewhere, and i shouldn't worry about it because it wouldn't drain the battery. Just a thought..

 

First you gotta figure out which one is making the noise. Could be either one, since many years they both switch on & off together.