Had some trouble with my Lenovo T60 becoming way to hot in the past. Not sure, but I guess it might have something to do with me having installed Ubuntu (Linux) on it. Here the other day it did in fact switch itself off because it was to hot, and when it today started getting as hot as before. So, a quick search on the Internet I found the description of what to do. Created the file “/etc/modprobe.d/options” with the following line “options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1”. Then, after a reboot I was able to control the fan speed, setting it to automatic using “echo level auto > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan”.
Thinkwiki to the rescue, the article found there