Radiator fan not coming on but gauge is on 3 bars.

I have a c3 2004 sensodrive 1.6 exclusive. The temperature gauge on the clock pod never goes above 3 bars but the car has gotten that hot you can’t touch the bonnet. It’s not started smoking or anything but common sense tells me 15 minutes of driving and ten sat on tick over and the bonnet that burns your hand it should be kicking in. I’ve unplugged the green temp sensor on the left hand side of the head and the fan runs at full speed. So it’s getting power and the fan works but it’s not reading the true temperature of the engine. Any help would be much appreciated as I love the car. I’ve got a gearbox fault as well / snow flake of death but I’ll save that for another post 1 job at a time. Thank you in advance.

I don't think there is a problem.
I could give you a long and convoluted reason why, but I wont bore you. You have given me enough information to form that conclusion.
If you really want piece of mind, buy an infrared thermometer and measure the bonnet and the outlet temperature of the coolant. Measure the temperature of the coolant at the thermostat housing. Where the 'green' sensor is. It should be around 90'C. If any other parts of the engine are hotter, that's irrelevant. The outlet temperature of the coolant is all you need to know.

I agree with Ozvtr, I can't see anything in what you mentioned that suggests a problem. Engines run hot, it's a side effect of internal combustion.

From what you've said, your fan works, so if it was needed it would kick in. Even in the hottest weather the fan on our C3 rarely comes on, usually when in traffic after a hard drive.

If you want a very rough check that coolant is circulating, put the heater on full blast (probably an idea to put the window down first ), if you cook then it's circulating fine

Cheers guys for the reply’s. sorry I’ve not read them sooner. I’ve bean checking my emails thinking I would get a notification when it would be posted but I must have them turned off. The heater does blow red hot air through the vents. The pipe at the top of the radiator is getting really hot just about able to hold it , the pipe at the bottom is tepid. The air con doesn’t work but it could be out of gas I’m going to undo the cap on the aluminium line and press the valve to see how much pressure is in it.thanks for replying and I’ll be back soon with some more bits as my gearbox/ sensodrive is playing up and I don’t have Lexia and haven’t a laptop to put it on. I have a pc well 3 pc but no laptop. So I’ll see you all soon.

Substomic1 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:05 pmI’ve bean checking my emails thinking I would get a notification when it would be posted but I must have them turned off.

There's a setting for notifications at the bottom of the topic, click on the 'spanner' and then select enable notifications.

Substomic1 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:05 pm The air con doesn’t work but it could be out of gas I’m going to undo the cap on the aluminium line and press the valve to see how much pressure is in.

Apart from maybe releasing harmful gasses the system can be under high pressure, perhaps leave this one to a garage with the proper equipment?

Substomic1 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:05 pmI don’t have Lexia and haven’t a laptop to put it on.

Well worth getting a Lexia and an old laptop to run it on, it can save your hours of time fault finding