The bad news is my electric fan stopped working.
The good news is I have the tow package which includes the mechanical clutch fan that IS working. When idling and in heavy stop and go, the temp climbs to 240F, but does not boil over and I am not losing anti-freeze out of the resevour. It quickly returns to the normal 210 +/- when underway.
My question is, do I really need to pay the $500+ get this fan fixed, or the can I live with it going to 240F on occasion? When a car is close to 9 years old, I start trying to rationalize repairs like this,

 

You could try looking in a junkyard for one. I have a cherokee but I can tell you electric fans are usually very easy to replace. Mine is two bolts and disconnect the plug going to the fan.

 

those fans are about $35 bucks at the salvage yard I go to,they even give you a 100 day warranty on them

 

My fear is that it is the fan relay and not the fan. If so, with an 02, the bumper needs to come off, or you get the dremel out and cut a holes to get access.

 

pull the fan and have it tested first before you do anything

 

Hey, I actually just fixed this problem not even a week ago...The first thing you need to do is verify what the actual problem is, so that when you go to buy your part, you're not wasting your money replacing something that ain'tbrokedon'tfixitetcblahblabhalbh.

First, I popped open the fusebox and checked the radiator fan fuse. It worked just fine, sadly. This would have been the cheapest and easiest thing to replace.

Next, we unhooked the fan from its closest hookup (maybe 4 inches away from the actual fan housing). Next, we created a quick splice to power the fan directly from the battery nodes. If this doesn't work, bing it's probably your fan. Ours did work, however.

Next we tested the amount of voltage via multimeter on the opposing end of that same connection you just unplugged, which should be coming from your fan relay. Ours read anywhere from 0 to 8.25V ->9.5V as the car began to overheat. From that low amount of spikey voltage, and the knowledge that the fan actually ran on battery powuh, we surmised it was indeed the fan relay. To get to this easier than taking off your bumper, take out the passenger headlight. It's retained by one enormous screw to the back of the housing. There are, iirc, 3 ball-snaps that are also holding it in. Next you have to cut your little hole, which you already know about. I can take a picture of my cut-out for you, if you want a better guess as to where it's going to be.

It's a very stupid placement for a fan relay, but we found that ours was not even mounted, it was just hanging there, and was actually physically split in half, yikes! A quick trip to Autozone and 30-40$ later, and wuzzah! the car never overheats.
Probably not the safest/best way to go about fixing it, but all in all it took me about 4 hours to find and fix the problem, spending no unnecessary money in the process.

 

If you could take a picture of the cut out, that would be great. The fewer holes I punch in my wifes car, the better. BTW, the way you went about the fix is fine. In fact, I have heard that outside of a dealer, the headlight removal method is how the shops handle this to avoid removing the bumper.

 

These 2 links may help.

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2

 

That second link sure does. Visualizing it, makes it look pretty easy!

Thanks!