89 Cherokee Replacing a Relay Socket for E-Fan
1989 Jeep Cherokee Pioneer 4.0L I6 Renix AW4 NP231
So it seems my Electric Fan, the only source of cooling for my jeep now, has decided he'd rather blow then suck. Taking a look at the E-Fan Relay shows that a few of the wires have melted and crumbled away into nothing. Ain't no thang a new Relay socket can't fix.
The Relay is an electro-mechanical switch that turns things on and off for you. They have an input circuit and an output circuit.
Pins 85 and 86 are the input that wait for a signal to turn on the output. They are connected to a coil that when energized will create a magnetic field that closes the output circuit.
Pins 87 and 30 are the output that allow the high amperage circuit to flow when the input it energized. The relay is used as the high amperage counterpart so that the switch or device that turns on the relay doesn't have the full amperage of the circuit flowing through it. This is used for safety and to allow smaller low amp switches to be used which take up less space.