Possible Solution:

1-Determine which fan you have. One plug or two. If you have a one-plug (2004 and after), you can wire in the resister easily without removing the fan. There are a lot of places to mount the 0.33 ohm 100 W (ARCOL 11-31 HS 100. R33. J) resister but my favorite is on the drivers side motor support. Just drill, tap and mount the resister (the picture here is before I realized on Artoo had the two plug fan and this option was off the table) wire it in with 10 ga wire as in this diagram , solder only with shrink wrapped ends, and you're done. No worries.

2-If you have a two-plug fan, 2002-2003, then the resister fix is less elegant and I have found that if you can persuade a dealer to give you a removed OEM fan, or the one broken in your car is OEM, you replace the resister and relay assembly with the
or the http://www.detroittuned.com/dorman-gen-1-fan-relay-kit one, pictured here, you'll be good to go for a LONG time. Note that some suggest that the Dorman fan needs a bit of extra help where the wires attach to the resister but that is your choice and there are all sorts of ways to do it. And there is another upgrade out there too. The picture attached has the OEM on the left, one upgrade in the center and the Dorman the one that has not blown on Artoo for a long while, on the right. But I would not simply crimp in the assembly. High-temp solder connections is the only way to go. If you want the best directions for removing the fan, https://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/how-to/216866-diy-r53-cooling-fan-replacement.html will give you everything you need.

And in the older fans where the relay is on the fan, use a new relay whenever you are in there. The relays are cheap and they start to stick after a while. Cheap insurance in my book.

Did I miss anything?

///Rich

PS-Thanks Chris, Zippy and Cristo for doing most of the grunt work on this. My guess is half the R53s out there have non-functioning low speed fans.

Also-I tried to get the URLs correct but the HTML editor is not behaving. It looks good in Preview but not when posted. Sorry.


<img src="https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.northamericanmotoring.com-vbulletin/600x400/picture_php_pictureid_74498_3f7bd74685da8fb45748bf b8213c001fa77e9647.jpg" alt="" />




Resister


<img src="https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.northamericanmotoring.com-vbulletin/600x281/picture_php_pictureid_86942_fc1a462c901e0a8b42c59b 32e847fac9c2596938.jpg" alt="" />

 

Replaced dead fan resistor today with a Doorman fan resistor (part #902-706) which is the one pictured on the right side of the photo above. This was the 2nd resistor. The first resistor was a part from URO Parts and once that was installed it failed immediately. (URO part #17117541092 - PRM) The (TCO) thermal cutoff blew. So I looked at the numbers on the URO TCO and compared it to the OEM TCO and it was WAY undersized. I then ordered the fan resistor from Advance Auto which was a Doorman product, compared the numbers of the TCO with the OEM part and the numbers were identical. So I installed the Doorman fan resistor and problem fixed.