Anyone have a Toyota 3.0 V6?

I've had my 1994 Toyota 4-Runner for 12 - 14 years. I've noticed something but never really investigated.

Tooling with or without cruise control on at 3000 rpm and all the gages are rock steady. The car is warm, nothing amiss and no AC on. The you hear this noise, it sounds like the rpms picking up, like the car's accelerating. No movement on the gages. It whines like this for two minutes or so and then you can hear it wind down and everything gets quiet again.

Til next time.....

Spending quality time staring at the gages recently, I got to study it up close and personal. Again, no AC. The whine comes up, runs a few minutes and then disappears. I'm thinking the radiator fan kicked on but the temp gage never moved as I was doing a stead 65 on cruise.

The car runs fine and this isn't a stresser, I'm mostly curious.

Dan

alternator or fan clutches kicking on?

Viscous coupling for the cooling fan? Perhaps what you're hearing is the fan gradually engaging and spinning up, then gradually disengaging, and winding down.

Any of the above. Absolutely no change in temp gage as if hot or cool water is moving around.

The car runs fine, just a curiosity noise.

Thanks, Dan

If you're moving at 65, it seems odd that the radiator fan would even need to kick on since there ought to be plenty of airflow and it turning on wouldn't really increase the draw.

However, if the radiator fan does turn on, you wouldn't necessarily see the temp gauge drop if it is just on the threshold of on vs. off, since it wouldn't need to drop much for the switch to turn off and those gauges usually aren't too sensitive.