New E fan assembly FINALLY finished

[Agnem]

Very nice job. Personally, I don't think the flapper things are needed, but it may lower their rate of use somehow.

 

[subway]

i wonder if Jason Freebird on here could set up a template for use to save all the drill work. then we could bend it up and mount things outselves to save some of our coin.

 

[tuckerd1]

Nice! Interested to see how it performs.

 

[RLDSL]

Very nice job. Personally, I don't think the flapper things are needed, but it may lower their rate of use somehow.

The flaps are a tried and true design that is standard on most high end European cars, and has been for around 17 or so years . it's nothing that I can take credit for. Spal Makes a combo pair of mounted fans with a shroud with a similar setup with 12 flaps in it here but that unit is a bit undersized for our engines

Usually on efan shrouds for high speed applications, they just leave holes open and will just cut louvers, but we're not running race cars that will be zorting around at high speed and having lots of air flow from road speed at all times, Our primary cooling concern is going to be lower speed air flow when climbing , pulling insanely heavy loads, and having the holes open would have teh fans drawing air from the engine compartment instead of through the rad, and just closing it off would restrict free air flow

 

[RLDSL]

Update : All installed and after much creative language directed at the computer fan controller, I finally have this setup all going. So far just a few short road tests, but results are astounding. I've heard all the folks who have done previous efan installations mention that they couldn't hear the things, so I rigged an indicator light to show when they are on... totally redundant with those fans when they kick on in high , the friggen things sound like theyre about to take off ( with the nasty side effect that I'm going to have to add some more floor insulation along the firewall area as those suckers kick an insane amount of heat up against the floorboard, and I'm feeling that through the 1' of Armaflex and the layer of double backed reflective foam insulation that I already put in there )

I sealed the shroud to the rad so it would get full draw I found some nifty special high temp silicone at the HVAC supply with a-85to+ 400 deg working range ( I figured the 1300 deg stuff was a bit overkill) and it even comes in aluminum colour to match the rad

I didn't connect the controller to my AC since I have other fans for that and It's a good thing, If you have it hooked into the AC line, , it kicks the fans on full tilt the whole time the AC is on, and I tried that and it had the engine temp down to below 160 ( it was 116 deg out with the full calculated heat index that day )

Instead I've got my old standby pushers for teh AC duty that will be taking care of that and thes esuckers won't be coming on until it starts to REALLY get warm. I've got it programmed to where the the thigs start rolling on to low speed around 110 and will run at variable speeds until it hits 230 where it will kick in to high speed . High speed rolls off somewhere around 218 and it kicks into the high end of low range and will start tapering off from there and it starts acting like a thermostat and tries to keep it around 210 unless the ram air takes it below that ( which it most likely will in most cases) I have the manual override switch to kick the fans on to high at the bottom of steep hills when towing heavy to keep it from ever building up any heat to begin with so it doesn't have to thrown any off.

The flapps seem to be working just as planned When the fans are on, I took a screwdriver and went to pull them up and they were sucked down tight. I even turned on my pusher fans to simulate some mild ram air effect so it's going to take a healthy road speed to push them open at low speed where I need the fans to do the pulling, they will stay shut

the gauge signal sender goodie didn't want to play nice with the sender wire on my Isspro gauge and I ended up having to use the sender wire from the factory gauge which isn't giving the most accurate on/off times, so I'm going to have to blow another $45 for one of the Spal senders so I can get it a tad more spot on. I spent a whole day out in the heat chasing down the problem trying to figure out why the fans wouldn't shut off before I figure out it didn't like my gauge

I can definitely tell there is a reduced load on the engine. Even though teh old fan clutch was toast, just the fan whipping around in there was causing drag. I can't wait to get a nice heavy load on this thing and see how it does

 

[pennsylvaniabo]

really curious about this. I installed a new clutch fan in the diesel and i can still heat the truck to the hash before the big red H. I cant hear the fan kick in from what i can tell. So I am really looking for a way to keep the truck COOOOOOOLLLLLL.

 

[riotwarrior]

Just an awesome read through this it was warm here today and I can only imagine that if I was running with the diesel it would be quite easy to get too hot...I'll take some photos of a big ass E fan at work..at the wreckers that I just may have to get ASAP!

 

[itsacrazyasian]

i can't tell you how much i miss having the electric fan. The AC was colder at idle, my truck had better performance and the best part was the better fuel economy. I wanna do the same as you did and lose the clutch fan.

 

[oldblue05]

I wish I woulda listened to you when ya told me to get these, the two 14's I picked up from summit to pull air and the 2 10's that came with my intercooler to push air are barely enough, I'm gonna modify my bumper to direct more air to it probably tomorrow and hope for the best. Top notch work tho!

Question: When I replace the zip tie thingys with a custom mounting plate my plan was to push them right up against the rad and not have any of the flaps, or anything else for that matter. Just enough material to hold them in place just touching the rad to maximize airflow coming from rad but nothing else, I guess the only downside would be I'll be pulling air only where the fans are instead of across the whole surface area?

 

[RLDSL]

Question: When I replace the zip tie thingys with a custom mounting plate my plan was to push them right up against the rad and not have any of the flaps, or anything else for that matter. Just enough material to hold them in place just touching the rad to maximize airflow coming from rad but nothing else, I guess the only downside would be I'll be pulling air only where the fans are instead of across the whole surface area?

Now, I don't know about with a stock rad, this setup was designed to function with a high performance aluminum rad, that said, they are stouter than any of the other e fans that have been used so far and some folks have been successful on factory rads.
I was told to go ahead and mount the things directly on the rad for testing and they should have done fine, hopefully mounting them both up high on the rad where most of the cooling can be done, but on a stock rad the surface area is even smaller so they would also have to be staggered, and since all the rad would be covered with no uncovered tubes with direct mounting, it would have a good pulll across there. It just wouldn't be pulling across the entire surface area at low speed when climbing a hill. That's the only advantage of the shroud. It allows the fans to pull from the entire surface area of the rad when climbing a hill with a load on and that's when you really need maximum cooling , when you are lugged down to 15-20mph crawling up a friggen cliff or some of those endless 20-30 mile grades out west where you need every little bit of cooling . It's for those suckers, I put the manual override switch in so I can kick them on high before I get to the start of the hill so I'll start out at the bottom at thermostat opening temp or less. IT's fairly easy to maintain temp but hard to get it off once it starts building on a hill like that. Thats where the factory fan clutches fail miserably, they wait too darn long to lock up and you already have a stinkload of heat to deal with and if it's 115 deg outside pulling 8% for miles on end, you are fighting a loosing battle before you start with a good fan clutch.... with a bad one, don't remind me

 

[rhkcommander]

Correct, if you have the fan up close ti will only cool the area around it when using the fans for pushing. Similar case when pulling.

How were the egts?

 

[RLDSL]

Correct, if you have the fan up close ti will only cool the area around it when using the fans for pushing. Similar case when pulling.

How were the egts?

I'm about to take it out for a little run on the interstate on a stretch with a couple of short steep hils, it's 105 deg out so that ought to be a nice little test run. I'll try to remember to take a look at the egts and see if there's any difference, although, I can't imagine there really being any measurable difference in that department.
----- Just got back from the first test run, being hooked up to the factory temp gauge as a trigger for teh control unit is shooting me in the foot. It comes on fine sitting in the driveway, but going down the road it comes on late. I had already reset it lower from last night where it didn't kick on until around 245 and today I set it to come on at 215 and it didn't come on until around 235, so until I get one of the Spal sending units The tests are going to be random at best, but at least even out in that heat when it came on temp held steady while climbing and started to drop quick, but then it kicked into low speed too soon so it's really hard to say how it's doing at the moment, I reached for the manual override to kicke it back into high to try and see how fast it would pull the heat off if behaving normally, but there's a 5 second delay when you hit the switch and I had almost hit the top of the hill by then, so I really didn't get an accurate reading, once it was back into high mode the heat went by-by quickly like it should, it's just for now, the blamed thing won't stay in high while hooked up to the factory temp sender, the readings are just too random. I'm going to try setting it at a much lower turn on temp to see if I can get it to behave a little better until the other sender gets here. either that or set it for high speed operation only ( it's best to use the 2 speed operation so you don't have the hard load of the hig speed fans coming on and blowing the fuses, it eases the load on a little at a time )

Egts were running around 450 around town and maxed at 850 while standing on it climbing a hill
So for right now, I'm in a holding pattern on testing until I get the proper sending unit for the control unit so I can actually set the blamed thing to come on at the right time instead of whenever it feels like it

 

[rhkcommander]

sounds good, thanks for all the info.

After my rebuild I'll likely fab something similar up

 

[oldblue05]

FWIW I have a aluminum 3 core rad but it's the stock size.