[BossHogg]

Always tell us what bike it is.
Because the older fan sensors were 2 wires and the newer ones are 1 wire, and the radiator has a short ground wire to the frame.

1986 Honda vt1100

 

[BossHogg]

Your radiator fan has a hot wire coming to it,

and its ground wire does not go directly to negative or to the grounded frame because that would make it come on all the time! Instead it currently goes to the thermal sensitive switch on the bottom right corner of your radiator. That is designed to only ground the fan motor when the temperature gets hot enough.

Therefore if you pull the wire off of that thermal switch and attach it to a good ground on the motorcycle your fan will come on anytime the key is in the on position.

I actually used A few strokes of a file to expose a bit of my steel tubular frame on that side of the bike for my grounding test,

but my bike is old and has been spray painted with many cans of black spray paint so repairing the damage I caused was a piece of cake. You'll probably want to find some other grounding point.

Could I put a paperclip in connector to jump it?

 

[BossHogg]

jump what?

your fan can't be jumped with a paper clip --that would bypass the winding coils of the electric motor, so if you connected the other side of that circuit to the ground that would be called a direct short!

The temperature sensitive grounding switch that is screwed into the bottom corner of the radiator on my bike only has one terminal the grounding wire from the fan goes into that switch and the fan will be grounded through that switch right to the metal radiator.

If you have a clean place to get negative electricity from within a paper clip's distance of that thermosensitive switch in your radiator ....yes you could use a paper clip.
Connect that wire that's attached to the center of the thermal switch to a clean solid ground point on the bikes frame.

Or a new wire that you ran along the ground for your garage floor just for this test -- a wire that might be connected to your Battery's negative terminal directly with a little alligator clip and the other end of that wire just sitting on your garage floor under the radiator.

So you're telling me if I bend a paper clip in a u shape and put it in that female connector that connects up to that the thermal switch that the paper clip in the female connection end will not complete the circuit or will it or does that have to be grounded as well

 

[BossHogg]

Yes the paper clip works fine pushed into the pins in the 2 wires from the fan.
One of those wires is the ground already.

Figured it out,and yes fan is working 👍👍