Yep i'm sure you're right. At idle there is a distinct noise from the fan and palpable air flow felt on the hand. At 2000rpm the air sound drops right away, you can only hear the engine, the fan visibly looks to be slow and the air flow on the hand drops right off too. In fact I can touch the fan and it's not spinning all that fast. (don't try this at home kids) On previous vehicles as the fan clutch senses the temp reach a predetermined level the clutch should spin the fan up with quite a roar and increased air flow.
Mine doesn't.
I think it may be time to look into a reoil at the very least.

Cheers,
Alan.

Hi Endo,

I had seen that thread - the issue when I looked at this was that the resistence seemed different between the 80 series gauge and the 60 as is the 100 guage different again....

I am sure that with some perserverence, we could get the right parts localy.

I chose not to do this mod because I still didn't have an alarm and the fact is that when a cooling system starts to play up - they can go rather quickly. Also, I wanted to know exactly what the temps were and thirdly was just the thought of having to pull the gauge cluster out is a scary thought for me!

for less than $150 and 10 minutes work - I had the solution that I wanted

I just had my 80 in for a 140,000K service.

I requested that my NEW genuine toyota Fan clutch be checked as well as to put full synthetic ATF in and to do it properly - ie. 22 litres was used to make sure there was none of the old stuff in the transmission.

Anyway, they decided that the fan clutch was low on oil even though it was not leaking - Toyota told them to add two tubes of their special silicone based oil to the clutch which they did. So it must have been low from new which I have heard has been happening in the US.

It seems that my temps are down now about 4 degree's from what they were before so I will do some proper testing but I can now hear the FAN whiring at anything above 3000 Revs which I wasn't able to before..... does anyone else with a 1FZ-FE hear their fan whirring at 3000 Revs and above?

I am wondering the fan clutch is now locking up too much?

Driving the 1FZ-FE last friday evening out of Perth (the temps had hit 36degC just before we left town) and towing the new soft floor camper (brakes were dragging a bit) the temps were consistenly in the 90's, at one point pulling up a hill at about 90-100kmh the temp shot to 100-101deg (reading from the thermostat)......alarm went off....I lifted foot and within seconds temp had dropped a few degrees, over the next 300m or so the temp had dropped back to 90 as we were going back down the hill with little load. I had the A/C switched on.

On towing the camper home on sunday (although ambient was not as hot) the temps only crept above 90degC once for a short while. With no camper later on the monday temps were 79-82degC.

I would be keen to hear what temps the 1FZ-FE owners have their alarm set at for reading from the thermostat?

Hi Chimpy,

I haven't had mine go over 100 degree's when towing.

The only time I got mine that high at the thermostat was sitting in DRIVE with the foot on the brakle pedel for about 15 minutes on a 33 degree day after I had been driving around town a fair bit. The Auto temp gauge was up near that too....

When towing a 2.5T boat on the freeway on a 32 degree day out of overdrive, the hottest I got (which was when I flattened it getting on to the freeway as I approached 100kph) was 95 - once on the freeway, it sat at 92 degree's.

If I locked up the TC - but still out of overdrive, I got it back down to 89 degree's C

That was before I had my new Toyota Blue Fan Clutch looked at.

When they looked at it, they decided to top it up with oil. Specifically 2 x tubes of Toyota VC oil. They noted that it didn't have much in there from new.

I then had a dramatic drop in temps - ie. 4-5 degree's at least however it seemed to be locked up and whirring/roaring all the time.

This morning, I decided to remove 18 ml of the oil (equivelent of 1 tube).

As soon as I did this - the roar quietened down within a minute of it starting up and the fan can be heard coming on later as it warmed up which is what it is supposed to do where as before it stayed roaring from cold when it had the two tubes in.

I obviously have not towed my boat yet but I can tell you that the temps seemed to have gone up again some what since removing 18ml of oil but it is behaving like I would expect it to.

EG. At Idle in PARK - if the MAx temp is 82 degrees - when I raise the RPM to 2500 RPM, the Temp is actualy dropping 1 or 2 degree's. If I take off from stopped at 82 degree's to 60 Kph, it drops 1-2 degree's. At 100 Kph it is still 1 degree lower than max temp stopped in PARK at idle. So my conclusion is that the clutch is now working and locking up as it is supposed to, where as before - when it was new - the temps would go up when I raised the idle speed to 2500 RPM and they would go up about 5 degrees at 100 KPH. When they added two tubes, the temps were in the high 70's and didn't go above 80 no matter what which I think was a result of the clutch being locked up too much.

Here are some pics of the Blue Fan clutch

Here is it pulled a part - note the syringe used to remove the measured amount of oil.

Here are some more

Hi Chimpy,

I would be setting it to 102 if you are happy with your cooling system... and the max you are getting is 101...

In saying that - I think it may be a little high from what I have seen - BUT I haven't towed in 36 degree's.

I don't like the idea that water is entering the engine over 100 degrees C myself...

It could be that your torque converter is heating up the oil in the gearbox which is running hrough your radiator before it goes through the oil cooler - I can see how this can drive the radiator temp up also - given you are towing, I would say this is having some effect...

Have you had the Cooling system POWER FLUSHED? maybe it's time for that if you haven't done that yet?

Check if your radiator fins are clogged up at all with bugs or mud/dirt ?

or your clutch may not be coping when towing and may need some fresh 10,000 wt oil from Toyota - they come with 3,000 Wt - the heavier oil makes the fan lock up more at high speed which is when you seem to be having higher temps.

Hi Frank, liked the pictures. How far down do you need to dismantle the clutch to add the oil? I think I will be doing this on the weekend I hope. Did you get my message about the lockup wiring for the torque converter? I would really like to know what you did to enable you to manually lock up the converter.

Cheers,
Alan.

Hi Alan,

Just doing a tech write up as we chat... tonight a detailed write up wll be posted

Stay Tuned

Hi Alan,

I thought I replied - if not, I apologise...

The wire that I hooked into is probably different to the one that you will need to - Rodney needed me to give him my chassis number and a photo of the plug so he could determin the right one as there are 3 or 4 different versions apparently... I would hate to give you the wrong wire and then you blow something up...

[/quote]

Hi Alan,

I thought I replied - if not, I apologise...

The wire that I hooked into is probably different to the one that you will need to - Rodney needed me to give him my chassis number and a photo of the plug so he could determin the right one as there are 3 or 4 different versions apparently... I would hate to give you the wrong wire and then you blow something up...[/quote]

Thanks Frank, rest assured I will check with a auto trans bloke before I put power to anything but I would still like to know what you did and what wire etc you used. Mine seems to hunt in and out of lockup at around 100kph (judging by the tacho and ear) even the missus commented on it on the freeway the other day!! What year/model is yours? Can't imagine too many changes with the same box in year close models.

Cheers,
Alan.

Sorry Alan,

I just realised I never replied to you on this one...

Mine is a 93 Petrol 1FZ-FE

First thing I would do is change your auto fluid to a synthetic - I did it with mine and the gear box certainly changes gears better - less lag... and runs a few degrees cooler...

Rodney also tells me that with Transmax Z the auto will last almost "forever" and will aparently in a lot of cases help with TC's that lock and unlock frequently.

Mine wont lock and unlock unless I press the pedal at 100kph - at 80 kph maybe but not 100 kph.

The wire on mine was a green/black wire however there was two green/black wires so he had to send me a photo to show me which one to use...

How's that TM-2 going? You know, if you wanted to monitor auto temp, you could put one with a sensor on one of the pan bolts...

Did you do the fan clutch mod?

Met someone the other day who recently did a head gasket on their 1FZFE... they were told it was because they had mixed coolant types.... it caused sludge in their radiatoir which caused their cooling system to fail... They also told me their gauge had moved up to "near" the red zone and they pulled over straight away, but it still was hot enough to do the head gasket... maybe our head gaskets are sensitive like the ones in the US market?

Or may be the OEM temp gauge is insensitive.