It's a rather hot day today; 95 degrees or so, and I get home after a 35 mile drive from my parents' place. When I turned off the engine, I noticed the fan in the engine bay was still going. This is the first time I've ever observed this, so I thought it might go away after a short while because it might be cooling the engine a bit more. I go inside and come back out after about 5 minutes to see if it stopped - nope. I turned the car to start (did not crank), turned off the fan and AC on climate control, and the fan in the engine bay stops! For good measure, I started the engine and let it run for a bit and turned it off again. The engine bay fan did not stay on this time. Has anyone run into this before? Is this another of those "normal" things? I didn't do much troubleshooting with this yet, but I am almost willing to write this off as the AC fan missing its signal to turn off (hoping this wont happen again; I normally turn the AC and fan off before shutting off the car by habit anyway, but I got lazy this time).

 

Electric fans on automobiles have been doing this for about 15 years. If you look under the hood, you will see a warning not to stick your hand down there, because the fan can come on when the engine is off.

 

I cannot reveal my source of information, but if the RX-8's cooling fan stays on after turning the engine off, it will run for ten minutes.

Ken

 

Mine runs for a little while too when it's hot out, but it either turns off as I'm leaving the garage, or a few minutes later. My old VW Fox and Toyota Celica did the same. You might have just had a coincidence with turning off the A/C.

 

It happened to me once before on a hot day.
Probably just trying the keep the engine cool.
I came back after five minutes to check the engine temp gauge and when i turned the key to the on position the fan went off.

 

you know it's official summer time when these threads start popping up.

 

feret should read my signature and follow the instructions

 

oh

 

YUP! I'm waiting for the "my A/C isn't cold" threads.

My favorite one is during the winter when the TPMS lights start coming on.