HI,

I have a bog standard 99 octavia 1.6 LXi, coming home on the M25 the other day it overheated and when i pulled over the fan was not rotating. The RAC man was completly uesless and after conceeding he knew nothing about Skodas I limped home turning the engine off every time i stoped.

I have been driving it for a few days now in quite heavy traffic at some points but it has not overheated again. However the fan is definitly still not working. I removed the wire plug from the thermostat switch and bridged the contacts. Now, from what i understand from the Haynes manual there should be two fan speeds relating to two cenections on the fan switch. When the contacts are bridged one set of contact spurs the fan into mototion the other does nothing?. The fan also remains on ALL the time even when the key is out! This i thought was not supposed to hapen?

Anyway, does it sound simply like the thermostatic switch in the radiator needs replacing or is it somthing more sinister?

Mark.

Not too familiar with the older Skodas but a lot of cars (French ones and by the sound of it VAG/Skoda cars) run the fan based on the thermostat.

By shorting it it will work at max speed at a guess.

If it's a twin-speed fan, it MAY be (again I dont know the particular fan configuration) that there is a resistor-pack to allow the fan to run at the lower speed. On some VAG cars this is a part that failed due to a bad design, and it may be worth googling for this.

I may have some time to find it back tomorrow but if not do a search for coolant leak on VAG

the fan will work if the ignition is off, but only for about 10 minuites max iirc, this is because the raley has an automatic timer built in..