the fan on my 01 rancher es only comes on after a long period of riding. my friend has a switch on his forman 400 that you just hit and it will come on when you want it to. does anyone know of any sites or directions on how to fix it like this? i would ask him, but he bought it used like that so he dont know.

 

I'm guesing the Honda boys have set this up to act on a tempature sensor. This means it will only come on if the heat of the engine reaches a certain tempature. (Probably the oil temp since the fan cools the oil) It sounds like your friend has a bad sensor that someone has rigged a switch instead of replacing the sensor or fixing whatever the problem is.

My concern would be: If you change this to come on only when you flip the switch...what happens if you forget? You could set it up to work by both the "auto" switch and your manual switch, but I'm not sure I would see the point.

I have a 350 ES and the sensor does fine...Oddly enough the fan gets the biggest workout while the tempature is very cold...I guess it has something to do with all the snow I'm pushing!


---If a man speaks in the forest and his wife does not hear him...Is he still wrong?

 

I agree with Gohl, the sensor kicks your fan on when the engine needs it. By making it manual you would almost have to run it all the time to make sure you didn't neglect to kick it on when the engine needed to cool off.
My Scrambler fan rarely kicks on and usually it's when I'm running in 4x4 mode.
If you really feel the need to do it though you could probably leave the fan hooked up the way it currently is and then wire in a separate power lead that was controlled by a toggle. Sort of like an override. I think you're probably better off leaving it as is though really.

 

The fan will rarely ever run after break in, and then usually from 4x4 crawling or using it for ... -work- ... -gasp-

 

TRX350, YOUR WHEELER IS FINE LEAVE IT ALONE. THAT FAN RUNS WHEN IT NEEDS TO,IF IT RUNS IT NEEDS TO IF NOT THE ENGINE IS NOT OVERHEATING, MY 01' RANCHER ONLY RUNS IF I POUND IT HARD IN ABOVE 70 DEGREE WEATHER. IF YOU MANUALLY CONTROL IT THEN YOU SCREW WITH OPTIMUM OPERATING TEMPERATURE THAT IS DESIGNED IN FOR MAXIMUM POWER AND EFFIENCY.

 

I agree with everyone, LEAVE IT ALONE.

Before I went to the Rubicon, I rode a Foreman 400. I could get the fan to come on by turning the headlights on and off. The fan also worked correctly with the temp sensor. I don't know if the momentary loading of the electrical system with the lights tricked the sensor into thinking it was time to come on?

My .02