For the first time ever my baby (2001 V-6) has a check engine light! It has about 97,000 miles, purrs like a kitten, but yesterday when I started the car to leave work in the 10 degree weather, I noticed that I almost immediately heard the fan running under the hood. I didn't think much of it b/c I wanted to get home, but as I drove home the Check Engine light came on and when I looked at the instrument panel I noticed that the temperature gauge hadn't budged. The heat inside the car was working fine, and the car seemed to be running fine, so I wasn't sure what the problem could be.

I am definitely going to take it in for service, but before I do I wondered if anyone knew what this could be caused by.

Oh and great forum! I plan to stay for a long, long time....:D

Something you can do, if you haven't already, is take the car to Advance or Autozone. These places offer free diagnostic, they should at least be able to tell you what service code the OBD unit has thrown. You can compare this to what the service center tells you, or you can use that information to replace the item yourself. From what you describe it sounds like temp sending unit has went bad.

temp sender..
easy $35 fix.

thank you so much for your advice--I am going to go to Auto Zone tomorrow and check it out. I will let you know what happens.

thx again!

if the computer doesnt see a signal from the temp sender, then it calls a code and automatically turns on the fan all the time,because it has no reference to cycle the fan from...little 2 wire jobber...real easy to fix

yeah- when the sender goes bad, the computer just assumes it's running hot and kicks the fan on and sets off the light.