Can anyone tell me howbench test a 3gen battery fan? It has 4 wires running to it all seemed to test open. one white with black stripe one black with yellow stripe one green with purple stripe one green with black stripe. Thanks
You can identify the wires by looking in the wiring diagram, and in the Repair Manual there are probably even simple test instructions given. More info on how to find both of those, here.
Thanks for the information I was talkin to a dealership mechanic today who looking at the diagram said he didn't know how to bench test it.
Did he also check for test instructions in the Repair Manual? Sometimes you can put the same book or diagram in front of different people and they will find different amounts of information in it.
The easiest way to bench test the fan is to buy a Prolong wiring harness and send the appropriate fan voltage that comes out of the Prolong charger into harness. After the Gen 1 Honda & Toyota were done, the cooling fans became much more complicated multi-speed devices that no longer could be spun with two wires of DC current. So Prolong (Hybrid Automotive) had to hire an electrical engineer to build a box that pretended to be Hybrid Battery ECU to run the cooling fan on Gen 2 and Gen 3 Prius, which is why you can't build your own wiring harness and have to pay $150 for their box w/harness. As for asking the dealer, the closest thing they do to bench testing components is throwing them in the garbage can and replacing them with new ones until the problem is solved because you maximize the amount of money you can thieve from your loyal customers that way. I do know in working with the known problem of wire corrosion on Gen2 cooling fan harness that there's a series of relays that the ECU uses to control fan speeds. Those relays are mounted on the same side of the car but further forward... To work on that problem I used an OBD2 bluetooth device and the Hybrid Assisstant phone app, which allows you to control the fan speed, but it's a very sluggish system to work on, but at least you don't have to pull the fan out... Lastly I have a Gen3 chassis with a fan that I'd like to use to charge my collection of hybrid loaner packs when they aren't in the vehicle, so I'm very interested in knowing an easier way to spin that fan than the ways I outlined above.
Here's a look inside what Prolong (Hybrid Automotive) built to control the cooling fan for Gen2 and Gen3 Prius....
The fan controller that hobbit built was for the HVAC fan, not the battery fan, but it might be possible to adapt the design.
