IDI/Windstar Electric Fan conversion help

[MTKirk]

I decided to take the plunge, and go with an electric fan. I have removed my old fan/clutch/shroud combo & have a new doorman dual fan assembly for a 2002 Ford Windstar (only $88 delivered to my door). The fans have two different electrical connectors, the one on the smaller fan is two prongs (12V+ and ground); The larger fan has three prongs (12V+ power, 12V+ power, and ground). In testing the fans I have isolated which is supposed to be positive & which negative (by taking note of which direction the fan blows). On the large fan with three prongs, it appears to make no difference in fan speed if I switch power between the positive tabs, or even if I provide power to both. See attached pic of the connector.

Can anyone tell me if this is accurate & if so which Positive tab(s) should I use on the large fan?

I have a dakota digital electronic fan controller. My plan is to have the small fan come on when coolant temp reaches 215F, if this lowers the temp to 205F the fan will turn off. Should the temperature continue to climb to 220F, the large fan will turn on while the small fan continues to run, when the temp is lowered to below 220F the large fan will turn off and the small fan will continue to run until temp lowers to 205F. The controller has a A/C input wire that will turn on the small fan any time the A/C clutch receives 12+ (regardless of temp, unless the fans are already active because of engine temps.

Any thoughts on these temp values: To low? To high?

I made mounts for the fan out of some structural steel stud scraps I had laying around, They run the full height of the fan shroud, are attached with 8 #9 sheet metal screws with rubber washers (steel roofing screws). I plan to bolt these to the radiator with 6 to 8 1/.4” bolts. This upper part of the shroud provides a tight fit on the upper part of the radiator and is very solid. The bottom 4 or five inches of my radiator extends below the shroud. I’m not particularly concerned with this, the shroud is close enough to the radiator to prevent air being sucked in between the shroud & radiator (without passing through the radiator). I figure that if anything this will give me additional “free” airflow when I reach highway speeds.

Thoughts on this: Is my thinking flawed? Should I work on covering this gap?

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Drop the fans as low on the radiator as you can go. Near the top you have direct airflow coming from the grille, down towards the bottom the front bumper blocks quite a bit of the area. Placing the fans down low makes them pull air thru a part of the rad that normally gets little "natural" airflow, while at the same time the part not covered by the fans is subjected to some nice thru-the-grille airflow just cause truck is moving. Best of both worlds you get like this.

For wiring, IIRC the 3-prong connector only receives power on its outer connector, the inner (middle of the three) is ignored and not hooked up to anything.

 

[crash-harris]

Leave the gap.

As for the larger fan with 3 leads, I imagine one was probably a seperate power for whether the A/C runs on the Windstars. Your controller probably has this feature as well.

Seems complicated on the fans kicking on and off. Doubt that just the little one will cool it off on its own. 2 points. Run it whet both gamma run on the same temp control, but if you can, have one kick on and spin up before the other. It'll put less load/shock on the charging system at start up. The other point, is to run constant duty relays to manual switches. When I did e-fans on Bruiser (gas truck) I had fan controllers die once a year. Manual control saved my @$$. Since it also seen a lot of trail time, the manual control was good for the low speed/high workload situations I was putting it in. I went from dual Taurus fans to one, then down to dual 12" JDM fans that sit flat against the radiator via the push-thru zip ties. Plenty for the gasser, but wouldn't move near enough air for the diesel. Either way, the redundancy of on/off manual controls that bypass the controller may come in handy one day. Just cheap insurance.

 

[FORDF250HDXLT]

everything sounds good to me.the small fan on 205F is too early.the t-stat isn't fully open yet.id got with 110-115F for small fan/120-125F for high+low.

with my viable rate controller i have my fans start to come on low around 220F.this spins both fans at the same time,so with your setup a bit earlier would probably be wise.
no matter though.you'll know just where to set everything once you drive the truck.this time of year,they shouldn't ever/rarely come on.so you'll probably not learn much until next summer.

 

[crash-harris]

X2 on that. One of my controller failures was over winter and the gasser never hit 230* until June!

 

[MTKirk]

everything sounds good to me.the small fan on 205F is too early.the t-stat isn't fully open yet.id got with 110-115F for small fan/120-125F for high+low.

with my viable rate controller i have my fans start to come on low around 220F.this spins both fans at the same time,so with your setup a bit earlier would probably be wise.
no matter though.you'll know just where to set everything once you drive the truck.this time of year,they shouldn't ever/rarely come on.so you'll probably not learn much until next summer.

No doubt: The last couple of days I've been driving around without the fan as an "experiment" the only time it got over 210 was after a 5+ minute idle. If it weren't for plowing snow, I'd probably just go fan-less till spring.

The other thing I've realized is that my fan was moving a LOT of cold air over my engine even at low temps and low speed. I monitor my fuel temps before & after the injection pump, with the fan It was difficult to get the post injection temps above 120F when it was 32F or lower ambient; Without the fan the post injection temps easily reach 150F even at 0F ambient. We all know that spraying cold water on a running Stanadyne Injection pump is a bad idea, blowing sub freezing air on it can't be very good for the pump either.

 

[FordGuy100]

I ran without a fan for 2 years in East Texas. Never had a problem with overheating, even when it was 100+*F. Like you said, the only problem is sitting in stagnant air. 100*F it takes about 10-15mph to keep cool (so if its windy out, drive your nose into the wind to let it idle if you can).

 

[LCAM-01XA]

+1 on the manual switches suggestion. Ours had the large fan on both auto switch (230 on 220 off) and manual, and the small fan was all manual. In cold weather the fan never ran, actually even with the fans off we still had to block the grille during our last winter's vacation. In hot weather the fan would kick on and off at low speed, once up to 40 mph or so she would shut off permanently unless a grade came up and engine started making lots of heat. Speaking of grades, on long steep ones the two fans running at full tilt could barely keep up - coolant temp always ended up at near 230 at the top, and let's not talk about how hot the oil got However, ours is a VERY heavy truck even when empty, your F250 is proably a whole ton (literally) lighter so that will make quite a difference. We're back to mechanical fan now for testing purposes mostly, I can see the whole grille needing to be blocked off with it next time we head north, but it would be interesting to see what she does loaded to the gills and hammer down up the Rockies passes...

 

[FORDF250HDXLT]

yeah i had to add an oil cooler to help keep the oil temps in check when hauling in hot weather.by keeping the oil temps down while hauling up the grades,this helped with coolant temps drastically.the oil temp transfers right over quick to the coolant temps.

 

[crash-harris]

yeah i had to add an oil cooler to help keep the oil temps in check when hauling in hot weather.by keeping the oil temps down while hauling up the grades,this helped with coolant temps drastically.the oil temp transfers right over quick to the coolant temps.

Remote line sandwich adapter between the factory oil cooler and filter to a finned oil cooler in front of the radiator? Or did you use the plugs at the back of the block?

I've thought about this before with a filter sandwich adapter. Now thinking harder about it.

 

[OLDBULL8]

I've got the complete wiring diagrams for my 2000 Windstar and 2004 Freestar. Both have the same fans. I'll look up the connections for the three pole connector on the large fan. Back in a while.

Cooling fan 2 is the large one. It appears the connection is the outer 1 & 3, center has no connection.

Looks like Fan 1 has a dropping resistor for two speeds.

 

[FORDF250HDXLT]

Remote line sandwich adapter between the factory oil cooler and filter to a finned oil cooler in front of the radiator? Or did you use the plugs at the back of the block?

I've thought about this before with a filter sandwich adapter. Now thinking harder about it.

there's not many options for our engines oddly since a 7.3l PSD share the same oil filter thread.so it's pricey.......but it works and works wonders.

aux oil cooler install

 

[crash-harris]

Saved your thread in my favorites

 

[LCAM-01XA]

I've got the complete wiring diagrams for my 2000 Windstar and 2004 Freestar. Both have the same fans. I'll look up the connections for the three pole connector on the large fan. Back in a while.

Cooling fan 2 is the large one. It appears the connection is the outer 1 & 3, center has no connection.

Looks like Fan 1 has a dropping resistor for two speeds.

So I was right on the 3-prong connector, middle prong is empty. Also, that dropping resistor is a waste of time on our trucks, waste of energy (electrical) too, and overall a rather poor engineering solution. But it's cheap and it slows the fan down... Skip it, with these trucks you get about the same airflow or maybe even more forced thru the grille while driving anyways.

Like I said we made the large one work most of the time as it actually draws less juice, then when it couldn't keep up the small one would kick in and you'd know it did cause the voltage would drop noticeably (with a good meter I mean) and the whining noise up front about tripple in loudness. However, I see that I was wrong, ot was this small super-speed fan that was on the temp switch, basically it was the "oh poop we need mad cooling right NOW" setup for emergency situations. The large (slower, less powerful) fan was manual switch only, this way we could always run the truck as hot as we wanted it (210F seems ideal for this particular one). Could have made it auto-power too, just didn't find the right factory (cheap, readily available) switch for 220 on 205 off or something like that... The 230 on 220 off switch controlling the smaller faster fan is actually for a 350-powered Formula Firebird IIRC.

 

[MTKirk]

I thought I should update this thread. I've removed the electric fans and gone back to a mechanical fan with a US MOTOR WORKS 22601 fan clutch. I love the idea of the e-fans, the higher engine temps are great for burning alternative fuels, BUT! the e-fans just cannot keep my truck from over heating while pulling my 4,500 lb travel trailer. They also have a hard time keeping the empty truck cool when I drive over 70mph, 3300rpm with my 4 speed and 4.10 gearing. the e-fans were a fun experiment, but they are now gathering dust in my barn, if there is anyone who wants to try e-fans (I think they'd be great if you don't tow and have an overdrive) get me a message and I will make you a screaming deal on them, I have a controller too!