blinking REC and AC lights/cooling fan troubles
 

so,

i discovered my electric coolant fan is working only part of the time. even with the AC on, it doesn't come on all the time. this has led to several boil overs and loss of coolant in my cooling system.

long story short, i cant figure out what i need to replace.

1. the A/C and REC lights blink for 30 seconds at start-up, what does this mean?

2. the a/c blows cold air 80% of the time, it will stop for a few minutes then start back up. how do i tell if its just the clutch or more serious problems?

3. the electric cooling fan does not always come on when i turn the AC on. i cant really tell if the fan comes on ONLY when the AC is blowing cold air, or if the fan comes on and off with no relation to the AC ( i think i remember the electric coolant engine fan NOT running, and the AC blowing out cold air). will the relay fix this intermittent problem or do i need to focus on the fan motor, or something else?


thanks,

the car is a 96 850turbo

For the outside cooling fan I would say maybe the relay.

For the inside A/C the light blinking means there is error codes in the A/C module.

Blinking lights on start up
 

When the lights blink at start-up, does it mean the control head is bad or there are codes? If codes, how do you go about reading them? Needless to say I have the same problem except no overheating issue, just no AC at all.

well i replaced the cooling fan relay. the problem is still there. the fan comes on sometimes but not most of the time. and it still overheats in traffic from lack of airflow. so ive just been leaving my heat on with the windows down in 100 degree weather.

so, the fan relay didnt solve this. how can i tell if the fan is bad? it still spins freely. what about the ac high pressure switch.

is there a way to hotwire the fan? if i just wanted to put it on a dash switch, how could i do that ?

FYI, the AC and REC lights arent blinking anymore. they only did it a couple of times.

There are codes to be read. Either here or over at MVS was a post telling how to pull the codes - something about turning the key to position 2, hitting the recirc. button 5 times and then counting the flashes - or something like that. It didn't work for me but I didn't really give it a good try.

If the fan "only" works sometimes, I'll guess that one of the power feeds is toast. Looking at the fan, it's got three wires coming off of it; black, red and green. Black is ground, red & green are power - one is low and the other is high, but I can also imagine that the fan uses one power wire for low, and both for high.

The relay has one red wire plugged into it on the right side, and red & green on the left side (if you're in the engine bay looking at the front of the car). The one red wire is the incoming power and the red & green run off to the fan. You could jumper the two red wires to test the fan, then wire the lone red wire to the green wire. The fan should spin with power connected to both wires, just take note as to what is a low speed and what is high (and then tell us!)

You could wire in a thumb switch if you want to go through the hassle, but it'd be best to fix it properly - since the fan is designed to work without the car running, it's designed to cool it when you're not around. If you override the system with a thumb switch, you could cause heat problems.

what do you mean power feed?
where is it located?
do you know what voltage the two hot fan wires use?

thanks for the reply

Power feed - you know, the power feeding the fan . . . ;)

If you look at the fan motor, you'll see the three wires running up towards the relay. Here's a post over at MVS that I made with some pictures:
http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...=relay#p139078

Since the fan is designed to spin without the car running, I'll guess voltage is 12~14 volts, but you should use a multimeter to verify. If you look at the 2nd pic from the above MVS post, the 'power in' cable is marked '30' and I'll guess that means 30 amps. Check your fuse box to verify.

so maybe retrace the fan power wires to make sure i didnt pinch them during my turbo install?

so heres my plan,

since im not sure about the power source, im going to run another 30 power wire directly to the red or green wire. or i may just run it off of the ignition until i have the time to retrace all the wiring.

If you were working on the intercooler & hoses, then it's possible one of the relay wires got knocked around. Got a multimeter? See if there's power running from the battery to the single red wire at the relay. I believe there *should be* (someone correct me if necessary!) when the key is not in the ignition.

If you mean run the power off of the ignition, DON'T. The fan draws a ton of power and the ignition won't be able to handle the load. If anything, tap off of the single red wire going into the relay to the green or red running to the fan.

As he said "DON'T". But you could use a wire off the ignition if you use it to turn on a relay which would carry the main current from battery to fan, fused of course.

But instead of going through that hassle, it would seem better all around to fix the parts and make it work the way it was designed, right?

replaced the relay, traced the powerfeed, . im starting to lean towards the actual fan having some sort of issue. the red power wire coming in was hot all the time. red wire going to the fan was hot. i read somewhere it might by a ac high pressure switch or something.

anyway, i put a 12 inch electric fan i had left over from a trans cooler swap on the front of passenger side radiator and mounted a switch inside. i figure i might want this extra fan anyway. guess i may have to take it to the dealership and let them have a crack at it.

got one more question. can i put a bose radio head unit in without a big hassel?

Well, you could – but way would you?
Disclaimer: I’ve never been a fan of Bose. Never , never ever!
From what I know, their head units are designed for a specific car – frequency response, acoustical reverberation, etc. If you have one sitting around, I’m sure you could make it work, but you’d have to make sure the speaker impedance matches the ohm rating of your speakers that you’ll be driving. You’d also have to splice all of the wires – I’ll guess you wouldn’t be able to get a wiring harness.
If you’re looking to buy a Bose head unit, I’d take a look at others. I’d think it’d be easier to buy something with a harness to simply ‘snap snap’ and you’re done then rewire everything.

Question about these blinking ECC lights. My ECC blinks upon start up too, however my heat works out of all of my vents and my cooling fan works. Everything works but the AC. I know it used to work, although hasn't in a few years, once it would be charged it would run out within a few months, so it's got a pretty bad leak somewhere (i'm guessing the evaporator). Will a bad leak causing the system not to be properly pressurized cause the blinking lights? Or what else on AC side of the climate control will cause the blinking lights.

Anything related to the environmental system will throw lights. I happened to find this a long time ago and I don’t know from where. I never got it to work for me, but I never really tried hard.

To quote:
===========================================
Your ECC (Electronic Climate Control) stores diagnostic trouble codes and displays them by the flashing lights that you noticed. To find out what the codes are do this:
Ignition ON, position I or II.
Wait approx. 3 seconds.
Ignition OFF
Ignition ON again.
Wait for .5 seconds (or rather don't wait at all). If a diagnostic trouble code (DTC) is stored, the indicator LED will flash once. Only start pressing the buttons (explained below) after the flashing.
Press in the REC button 2 times within the following 2.5 seconds.

You will get a set of blinking lights in groups of 3 (i.e.: 2blinks, pause, 3blinks, pause and 1blink....long pause indicating 2-3-1 DTC, etc.) The long pause of 5 second is before the ECC unit give you the next code, if there is more than one problem. You need to write down everyone of these trouble codes. Once you get the same code again, you've gone through all of the trouble codes stored in your system and you can stop.

Now, you want to erase the DTS's (you have to go through all of them for them to be erased, so be patient) Follow the procedure above, but instead of 2 pushes, push the REC button 4 times (very quickly- within 2.5 seconds). Now the codes should be erased, and you would get code 1-1-1 (which means no codes are stored) if you tried the first procedure again .

Now try to use your fan like you normally would. If there's a problem go through the diagnostics above again. Once again, write down your DTC's. The codes that remain after erasing are the ones you need to be concerned about.

Note that the DTC's can also be erased by disconnecting the control module for more than 2 minutes (disconnecting the battery is the easiest way, but make sure you have your radio code if you do this). DTC 5-1-2 (5 blinks, a pause, 1 blink, a pause and then 2 blinks) can only be erased by disconnecting the control module as stated above or by going through a successful self-adjustment or a "set" (explained below).

In the case that you have a new control module, it has to be "set." To do so, you push the REC button 3 times instead of 2 like you did to read the codes, or 4 to erase them. Sometimes a used ECC control module will act like it's never been programmed and will need to be set. That's when you'll get the 5-1-2 DTC.

Hope this all helps. Please post back the DTC's you got AFTER erasing them once. In other words, if you're able to erase the trouble codes, and they don't come back, you've essentially "fixed" the issue(s) you were having with your Electronic Climate Control unit.
===========================================
end of quote.

Nice, much appreciated. I will give that a try tonight and report back to see if it works.

that should work for the 94-95's with obdI. i guess i gotta find a scan tool to reset my obdII. all i got is bigstuffs and ls1edit.

of course, when i show up at my volvo guy's shop this afternoon, the fan is working correctly.

even though i told him it would not come on with AC in on position, he thought the overheating might be from the cat being clogged and making it run hotter. i did notice a hot spot at the passenger side of the radiator. and when i turned ac on, the whole radiator got hot quick. im stumped.

Yeah, I couldn't get what you had there to work. I did however find this link:

http://www.volvoclub.org.uk/tech/ser...ystem-Auto.pdf

Which uses the OBDI. Worked like a charm. Found out I have code 1-2-4 stored in my ECC, which is my driver's side temp sensor.