The owner went out to his 2014 Nissan Qashqai for the second day, to find that he needed a jump start, and now he wanted to know what was draining his battery. This job didn’t take too long.

While walking out to the Qashqai, about a half hour after it was dropped off, I could hear that the cooling fan was still running. I knew this was very likely going to turn out the reason for the flat battery problem.

The diagnosis was fairly quick and I soon came to the conclusion that the cooling fan relay was sticking closed and was the cause of the problem. The next step was to find the relay and check it out.

The relay was in quite a hidden location, situated in the relay box under the LH headlamp. I didn’t expect this to be quite as difficult to access as it was. From the top, nothing of the relay box could be seen. It turned out that access was up through the inner wing.

It took longer to get to the relay and replace it than the diagnosis had taken, but with the battery on charge all the time, at least it allowed time for this to get a good charge before finishing the job.

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