Fans starts after turning off the car

[Snowman89]

This morning my car was completly dead when i tried to open it, for the first time..

I tried with both keys and i then discovered that the battery was completly flat.

After some hours of charging i managed to get the car up and running and i figured that the old battery just died on me therefore causing this.

However i did notice something really strange once i parked the car once again...

About 30s after i turn the ignition off both radiator fans start spinning at full blast, so that is most likely what caused the flat battery..

The interesting thing is that if i get into the car and turn the ignition on, without starting the car, the fans stop spinning.

If i then turn the car off again, the fans come on after about 20-30s.

I tried to leave the car for about 5-10min and when i got back the fans were still spinning.

The temperature outside is about -2C and i had not been thrashing the car.

 

So at the moment I'm forced to disconnect the battery since this is my daily driver.

The car is an Skoda Octavia MK 2 1.8 TSI 2010 which has done about 960000km.

Any ideas on what the problem could be?

The car had the engine rebuilt about 3000km ago, due to high oil consumption, so i hope it wont be anything expensive..

[TheClient]

Unlikely to be anything as serious as your rebuild costs!!! It's a pretty common fault. Check water ingress in the main relay switch box near the battery.  try to dry out and maybe replace affected relays and or ground points corroded.  If not that, it is likely to be the fans and controllers themselves.

 

 

Edit: Quite a lot of posts on here about it.  If you google it with briskoda octavia mk2 fans running or fans draining battery or something similar you should get some hits...

Edited 12 February, 2017 by TheClient

[Snowman89]

1 minute ago, TheClient said:

likely to be anything as serious as you rebuild!!! It's a pretty common fault. Check water ingress in the main relay switch box near the battery.  try to dry out and maybe replace affected relays and or ground points corroded.  If not that, it is likely to be the fans and controllers themselves.

Thanks for the reply.

Actually i did wash the car yesterday..

 

I did try googling it, but most of them had problems where the fan was running when the car was on and then kept on spinning once the car was off.

[TheClient]

It is common. Dry out the relay panel in the plastic box neat the battery. Check for bad or corroded earth terminals.  You can use a hairdryer (low heat setting) or some other heat source, or sunshine if you can find any. If it does not permanently resolve look to replace the relay or beyond that the fans / controllers.

 

Here is one old forum post but there are others.

 

 

Edited 12 February, 2017 by TheClient

[Snowman89]

1 hour ago, TheClient said:

It is common. Dry out the relay panel in the plastic box neat the battery. Check for bad or corroded earth terminals.  You can use a hairdryer (low heat setting) or some other heat source, or sunshine if you can find any. If it does not permanently resolve look to replace the relay or beyond that the fans / controllers.

 

Here is one old forum post but there are others.

 

 

Thanks!

I rushed of to jack up the car to be able to remove the plastics under the engine and to manually disconnect the fan.

So now I'm 99% sure that the car will start tomorrow morning..

 

I will look into that relay next weekend when i have time to connect the fan again.

I really hope it is as simple as that relay..

I did look into the relay/fuse box in the engine bay, but i could not see any water or moisture at all.