Hey everyone,

I have a 1982 244 Dl kjet and i've been having some temp fluxes for a while...ever since i bought the car. I at first checked the fan clutch when the car was cold and it seemed to be as it should. You could move the clutch with your hand....with some resistance. The other day i checked it after i had run the car for a few minutes drive....and after i turned the engine off it seemed to spin a bit. At this point i could easily spin the fan and it had much less resistance than before.

Is this how the fan clutch is supposed to operate?

I would appreciate any help.

sounds like the fan clutch is bad or the radiator is clogged. the clutch needs heat transfer from the rad to warm up it's thermostat and lock up. start the car and let idle to warm/hot. when the temp is highest, rev the motor to about 3k and hold it. let it go back to idle . the clutch should lock then. if it doesn't, pull the fan shroud and feel the entire core of the rad. if the center is cold, you need a radiator. if the core is the same temp all over, top, bottom and sides, replace the fan clutch. good luck, chuck.

its' really strange...on hot days...
on the highway the car's temp goes to halfway (normal is 35% due to thermostat). Then when i slow the speed down to say city speed driving...it goes back to 35%. This never occurs in pure city driving, or on cooler days. I'm thinking i'ts something to do more with the radiator. What do you think?

of course this may all be normal for my car because it's a pre temp comp board so a little bit of flux may be called for. I'm just trying to see what's what first because this much flux shoudln't be happening IMO.

BTW the water pump, thermostat have been changed a few weeks before. With the old thermostat (which i thought was bad because it was exibiting the same behavior)it was doing the same thing except it's normal mark would be 50% and it would go up to like 3/4 or even up higher near the red mark on long trips.

I'ts really strange...

where are you? what temp is the thermostat? if you are getting "hot" at halfway, there's nothing to worry about. the 35% is cold, even for a kjet car. the control pressure regulator relys on ambient temp and voltage for maxing the control pressure lean. yours would just take a little longer to get there. if this was an lh car, that's probably costing 3-5 mpg.

with the temp rising at speed and lowering at city driving, the rad is suspect. were things the other way around, it's the fan clutch. your fan clutch may not be warming up at those temps, so it's hard to tell if anything is really wrong.

it's been my experience the temp gauges in the early cars is accurate enough unless the sensor has failed. obviously, not the case with yours. the same sensor is used for the gt clusters in the 75-80 240's, so, i'd say yours is real. another way to tell is to turn on the heat. if it's hotter on the highway than around the city, the gauge is not lying to you.

yeah....i've been thinking along the same lines. I'm going to do a flush on my radiator.....and if everything checks out the same as usual i'm going to leave things as they are. My only worry is that if i was to get a normal temp thermostat (i.e. the 9 oclcok one) then the temp would climb past the 50% and into like 65-70%%, which i'm not really comfortable at. still, well see what happens. Your help is really appreciated.

depending on where you are, 65-70% isn't bad. just don't let it get in the red. 9:00 is the average temp volvo likes, not where they HAVE to be. a little above or below is ok. if i understand you, you are too low. good luck, chuck.

Here's a low-cost suggestion which is only a little more involved than a flush. Go ahead and do the flush... but when done, REMOVE the radiator from the car (2 screws, 2 bolts, 2 hose clamps... easy). Blast the cooling grid from the back side with your garden hose... keep doing this until you see no more gook come flying out. Reinstall, and refill with new coolant... then see what happens.

I moved to the AZ desert last summer and found my original rad (vintage 1992) could not keep up with the cooling load when the AC was on and the ambient temps were over 105 (i.e., June-September weather). Replaced the old one with an OEM, which took care of things nicely. BUT - for the heck of it, I hosed out all 11 years worth of crud buried in the fins, and believe me, there was a LOT. It was not worth my time to reinstall the rad to complete the experiment, but considering how little time it took, I think it's worth your while.

Make sure you drain the block via the valve on the passenger side, and refill via the thermostat housing to ensure adequate coolant in the block before firing up (i.e., don't just fill the rad and expansion tank).

well i did a flush. I empitied the whole system, then i flushed it with some of that prestone(power flush junk). THen i flushed it some more :). After that i sprayed the fins of the radiator. Nothing goopy came out though since the radiator is only 2 years old. Anyways i'm leaving it as it is because it's usually around 7:30 or 8:00 and with the hotter san diego summers coming it will probably stay put around 9 oclock anyways. Thanks for the help guys, at this point i'm just thinking it's the kjet system without the temp comp board that allows these fluxes so i'ts more or less normal :)