Finally got my new thermostat installed and began putting coolant back into the system. I started the truck up and let it run for a good 30 minutes to clear it of air bubbles with my spill free funnel attached. It spat out air for about 20 minutes and stopped. I left the heat on to get the fresh coolant circulating (Im might have messed up and have 80% coolant in there-long story) but the electric fan never kicked on. The temp gage stayed at 195 the entire time. Is this normal? Thanks-

`Rick

 

Someone might correct me, because I have a 96 and they can differ in subtle ways. But what you describe sounds normal. The aux electric fan usually comes on as needed, and that tends to be in the 217-220f range. On a 96 it will also always come on anytime the AC compressor is active (but I'm not sure that is the case with newer models).

 

Thanks for the advice Jordan

 

Sounds right to me also based on experience with burping my 97 many times. My fan has always kicked in at 210-212. I found it helps to drive the left front up on something like a curb or ramp to make the filler the highest point in the system.

 

When I flushed my cooling system a short while ago I took the heater hoses off at the thermostat and used a garden hose to back flush the heater core and then took the upper and lower hose off of the radiator and flushed away there getting lots of gunk flushed out of the radiator and engine block. I then put the radiator hoses back on and filled the radiator up with antifreeze leaving the heater hoses off until it started flowing coolant out of the thermostat housing. Hoses back on and was done burping.

 

Well almost... I have done this too and there is still some air in there that needs to be worked out, even if you fill it up until it runs out of the stat housing with the top hose undone which is higher than the heater hose on the housing. But this method is for sure the closest you are going to get until you run it up and hold it at about 15 hundred RPM's and top it off a few times more.

 

In a '00 model, the two things that trigger the electric fan are 223 degree coolant temperature, or the A/C system reaches pressures of 300 psi high side, 20 psi low side. In those cases, the fan will run until coolant temp. lowers to 217 degrees, and/or A/C system pressure lowers to 235 psi. If the A/C system isn't charged, only coolant temperature will trigger the aux fan because A/C pressures will never be reached.