this is not for my jeep, but a friend's '97 XJ
yesterday, one of the cooling fans on the radiator (the one on the driver's side) would continue to run after the vehicle was shut off. i guess that in itself is not so strange, my VW Jetta will continue to run the fan for a few minutes when it is really hot out, as it will continue to run the coolant through the engine if it is hot out. but, i am in maryland, and it is the dead of winter. and the fan didn't shut off, it ran until the battery died. so he got a jump so he could get to work today, and when he turned the engine off, the fan would continue to run. i disconnected the battery so that it wouldn't die. 8 hours later when we got off work, when i hooked the battery up again, the fan immediately turned back on. i checked the fuse box in the engine bay, and noticed that one of the relays in there was for the cooling fans. so with the battery disconnected again, i pulled out (what i thought was) the relay for the cooling fans, inspected it (it looked fine) and put it back in. i later realized that i had actually pulled the relay marked 'ASD', which according to the manual, is for the 'Auto Shutdown.' but, for whatever reason, the simple act of pulling out and reinserting the 'ASD' relay fixed the problem, or at the very least, fixed it for the time being.
can anyone give me any insight into what exactly happened here? is the 'auto shutdown' relay for the circuity that turns that fan on and off? (the fan on the passenger side appears to always run, while the one on the driver side appears to run only when needed).
erik '78 jeep CJ7, mostly stock