[Ricklandia]

Good news, bad news - The good news is that it's finally time to get my wife's Spider back on the road. The bad news is, it's been parked outside for nearly 2 years [it's a long and unpleasant story]. Things started off well, a fresh battery and he [my wife affectionately calls 'him' Marcello] fired up at the twist of the key. After a few squeeks and moans, he was rolling through the neighborhood and feeling pretty good. A further shakedown turned up a few minor issues; no headlights, no tail lights, a couple of other small issues. I managed to get the lights issues resolved by pulling the fuses and giving them a little emory board cleaning. But I have one last unresolved problem; the radiator fan relay. At least I think it's the issue. Just before we had to take him off the road, there was a prblem with the fan relay. My wife had call from the side of the road having seen the temp guage rising. We nursed the car home and after some poking around I saw the fan relay looked distinctly 'burnt' around the area of one of the fuse blades. I had to make do in a pinch and after a little dissassembly work I was able to 'repair' the realy, at least to get it functioning and the car roadworthy again. I'm afraid that this time it may be done, I am getting no fan activity at all. I checked the IAP website but I don't see the relay listed for sale at all, anyone have an idea who might carry one?

 

[Alfisto Steve]

What is it a 30A fused relay? Probably a good parts store should have one. Take old one with you and get one with same diagram of contacts shown on cover.

It is a double pole double throw relay with both 87 87a poles hot when energized to run dual fans. Isn't your fan relay plugged into fuse box on 90 Spider.

Alfa Milano 60507655 30A fused fan relay very similiar and 164 horn relay same type 30A fused relay 82461829.

 

[Ricklandia]

It is a dual throw relay - low and high speed [when the A/C is on] and is plugged into the fuse panel. It has a 25A fuse plugged in it, but I don't know if that's what belongs in it. The fuse itself is not burnt but the relay it definitely seen better days. I'll take a trip to the local 'parts mart' and see what they have to offer. Many thanks for the info, my wife will be ecstatic to get 'her boy' back on the road!

 

[Ricklandia]

No joy in mudville. Tried the mega-parts dealers in town [Discount, Advanced, Bennett, Pep Boys, Napa] but no one even listed it as an available part. We do have the name of an Alfa 'specialist' but the shop is closed for the weekend [no surprise]. Got a question though...
As I remember it, the fans are designed such that they kick in high mode automatically if you turn on the A/C regardless of the water temperature. Does that sound right to anyone?
This would at least help me determine if it is indeed the relay and not something else. I gotta figure out something to get the car back on the road this week, my wife found a job after months of searching.

 

[papajam]

FIAT eper parts manual P8 shows this relay with part number 82461830 (the non-A/C equipped cooling fan relay is 82461829). DiFatta shows 3 in stock. Fuse rating is 30 amp.

The schematics in the 1990 service manual show this Single Pole Single Throw (SPST) relay, with two #87 outputs, to have two triggers; engine coolant temp and A/C trinary switch (min/max pressure switches). There is no indication in the wiring that the fans are multi-speed.

EDIT: My mistake. I read the parts catalog incorrectly. The correct cooling fan part number is 82461829 (DiFatta shows zero in stock). It is the A/C relay that carries part number 82461830. Sorry.

 

[Gubi]

Yes, what Jim said. They're not multi-speed, they have one 87 output for each fan, IIRC.

(A buddy once had his accidentally replaced with a standard 87/87a relay. The result of this was one fan was on all the time, it would just switch which one when the temp got hot enough )

If you want to do a quick test, you could pull the relay and (carefully) jumper the 30 connector to each 87 in turn. Fans should come on if everything but the relay is working.

Note that if there was evidence of burn marks around the relay, it's entirely possible that there's some other problem with the circuit. If it were me I'd check to make sure the wires to the fans aren't shorted to ground somewhere, and maybe check the current draw of each fan.

 

[Gubi]

If that particular relay is NLA, worst case you should be able to replace it with a 30A dual-87 relay from your local auto shop. If you do this you should add an inline 30A fuse to the relay power feed to replicate the original setup.

 

[Ricklandia]

All excellent advice, many thanks! Gonna do a little more testing today...

 

[Ricklandia]

Good news, bad news... still haven't found a source for replacing the relay, but in digging through the forum here I managed to stumble across a thread with both a photos of someone's '90 fusepanel and a wiring diagram. Turns out the relay used for the A/C is exactly the same as the one for the radiator fans! Just so happens our Spider has A/C, so I swapped out the fuses [A/C was 10, Fan was 30], swapped the relays and VIOLA! Fans are now running! No A/C for now but at least it's back to being roadworthy. The search for a replacement relay continues...

 

[Ricklandia]

Somewhat unrelated but I'm not sure where this post fits best... When my wife and I bought her Spider several years ago, I purchased an Alfa Service manual from IAP that came on a CD. When I recieved the disc I was a little alarmed to see that it didn't want to install on a Windows XP machine, it needed Win98 I think. Not a big deal at the time, I had an old Win98 machine in the garage and I 'thought' the files were in PDF format. Today I still have XP machines at the house but forget about Win98! After trying to fire up the disc [related to this thread] I discivered the files are not in PDF format and the program will not run under XP. Anyone familiar with this or heard of a solution? Don't have the disc at hand ATM unfortunately, they're back home on the desk.

 

[Forzaguy]

Try running on XP in compatability mode.