[RWP]

I'm flying from NC to Orlando tomorrow to pick up a 2006 Cayman S with 42,000 miles. Car had 40,000 mile service at 37,800 miles in Feb. No apparent problems. Just had PPI by the same shop and showed a code of driver side cooling fan inop. So failure likely occurred in past few months. I'm having shop put on new tires and align. They quoted me $687 for a fan replacement. My question is whether this year Cayman/Boxster had a fan resistor, since these are a regular failure item ($100 item vs $400+). I've seen conflicting answers to this (2006 different from 2007?). I'm willing to pay for the repair if it's likely the problem. Given the cost of a new fan, labor in this case is not horrible. I also had suggested to me that this failure is random and somewhat premature and I can get a tested used fan for about $200 and install that. It appears to be a fairly easy DIY. I'm planning to bring the car back to NC and have been assured by several owners that the car will be fine on the trip (essentially all interstate), and I should be able to swap out the fan after testing to be sure it's the issue.

Any comments, hints, references welcomed.

Thanks.

 

[RSchwerer]

I agree that with highway driving the speed of the vehicle will more than compensate for the fan.
In fact, as long as your not stuck in a traffic jam with long idling, it will probably be fine for city driving.

 

[bigwong]

I just helped a friend replace his for the same reason. It seems something jammed the fan so it wouldn't rotate. Since we had it, we put the new one in, but putting 12V to the old fan made it turn. On the track, it will run warm with only one fan working on a warm day.

 

[RWP]

UPDATE:

We drove back with temp gauge straight up, no variance. I have made several short trips (inspection, registration, etc.) around town with same result. Of course it's only been in the 70's and low 80's here in the mountains.

I received a salvage fan and housing from Highline Auto Parts in PA. Part number checks out and condition is very good. Skillwise, I can replace this fan. However, wondering about how much trouble. I've seen two sets of instructions, one specifying removing the bumper and wheel well lining to clean radiator and replace fan, and one showing how to do it by removing only the wheel well liner. Since I discovered that my car has (Rennline?) black grille guards I don't think i've got much accumulation of trash so would like to get this step done sooner rather than later. Can someone enlighten me on the better way?

 

[danschy]

UPDATE:

We drove back with temp gauge straight up, no variance. I have made several short trips (inspection, registration, etc.) around town with same result. Of course it's only been in the 70's and low 80's here in the mountains.

I received a salvage fan and housing from Highline Auto Parts in PA. Part number checks out and condition is very good. Skillwise, I can replace this fan. However, wondering about how much trouble. I've seen two sets of instructions, one specifying removing the bumper and wheel well lining to clean radiator and replace fan, and one showing how to do it by removing only the wheel well liner. Since I discovered that my car has (Rennline?) black grille guards I don't think i've got much accumulation of trash so would like to get this step done sooner rather than later. Can someone enlighten me on the better way?

I recently removed my bumper to clean my radiators/condensers. See http://www.planet-9.com/987-cayman-...our-987-today-324.html?highlight=do+987+today post 6473. Bought my car with about 40k miles (no grilles), put on grilles and have driven it another 10k miles. The problem is you don't know when the grilles were put on. Removing the bumper was not that bad - lots of simple steps that took an hour or so (instructions in Articles and also on youtube). When I first got my car I spent some time cleaning out the radiator area from the front before I put on the grilles, but you can't get everything, especially the debris between condenser/radiator (see pics on above link). Maybe armed with a flashlight you can determine from the fan location how much debris is between the condenser/radiator and decide whether is is worth taking off the bumper.