Since we are on the subject of electric fans...

[freebird01]

Well i got the idea from Mel's fan thread... my fan clutch took a dump and i welded it up solid for now but for a more permanent solution i'm thinking on trying the Taurus fan mod.

i have a feeling i may end up going to the yard this weekend to see if i can find two others but i pulled these fans a long time ago for use on my samurai...

now i dont know if i didnt pull the whole thing but i dont remember there being any shroud. i think these fans bolted into a sheet metal surround but its been so long i cant remember for sure..

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both are the proper number required but the last two digits are different (i think its different revisions of the same part but not sure)

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what scares me is they are no where 16"...more like 13" and 12 1/2" (there is a noticeable difference in size.)

does anyone have a more definitive resource for the part numbers i just took pics of?

 

[Agnem]

I can try to get the Ford part numbers for the fans I used. They did come in a shroud.

 

[mooseracing]

The Caddy fans also have a shroud and one large fan (iirc around 15") and one smaller at 12-13. I have run them for about 5yrs in my other DD/Off road gasser without an issue.


I did notice when I first installed them, along with running a plow, I had to step up to a bigger alt. At that time I built a 200 amp Delco ( can't pass up free alternator that needs a rebuild).

Just another option to look at, at the junkyard. Also throw in the T-birds as they have a large efan.

 

[87crewdually]

Whatever fan(s) you go with for maximum effectiveness you need to put them in a shroud. As-is in your picture the fans will only pull air through some of the core. With a shroud the fans will draw through the entire radiator. In a sense with a shroud you will be creating a wind tunnel.

 

[freebird01]

im going to look at other fans this weekend but if i end up using these i will make my own shroud...thats always been the plan...

what confused me are these facts:

1. i know they can from ford taurus's but neither had a shroud...they went into the metal rad support.
2. they are no where close to the dimensions mel posted in his write up.
3. they have slightly different sizes from one to the other and they are a slightly different part number.

i did not buy these with the intention of putting them on my truck. i bought these for a different project last year i believe.

 

[snicklas]

I do agree that Taurus fans move what seems to be a massive amount of air. I have a set of the Taurus fans, However the are in my 98 Sable Wagon, and I know that when the fans are running, I can feel a breeze coming out from under the car when I step out.

I undstand the consern about the amount of cooling they provide, and depending on how the are connected, I wonder that if the overall effective cooling may be a bit higher. I know that with electric fans, and I believe that Mel has his set up, that if you have a manual control to turn the fans on and off, that overrides any automatic control, these fans would cool no matter what the truck is doing, ideling, moving, moving at highway speeds or even shut off with the fans on.... I know that a minimal amount of air movement make a difference. If the fans were turned on they would cool, at any speed an move the "maximum" amount of air all the time. A clutch fan like is stock, does not start to move "maxium air" until the clutch gets really hot air across the sensor. At this point, you are already running hotter that an electric system would be, even with the automatic system that Mel is running, he is controlling the fans with coolant temp, and the low speed comes on at ~200 I believe. At this point he is cooling the radiator when the coolant is entering the radiator at 200...... a clutch fan, to kick on at a stock setting, or even an MS TECH modified fan, the air has to be at that temp, which means the coolant in the radiator is much hotter than the set-point of the fan. I know there is a consern at a high load, but I think if desigend correctly, electrics could be as good at cooling as the mechanical fan. I may be looking at this wrong, and if so I will happily stand corrected.

What gives me this reasoning is..... we were caught in a traffic jam on the interstate July 4th weekend, Monday Afternoon. When I stopped for the jam the outside temp was ~96 degrees. We were in the Excursion with a 100% stock setup 6.0 which has an engine mounted clutch fan. If I was sitting still the engine was staying at a normal level, but the AC went from cold to cool. It was not uncomfortable but the AC was not working at 100%. But, if traffic were moving at even a walking pace, basically ideling forward in drive and adding no throttle (I could have walked faster) the AC started cooling better. I know the same air is going throught the AC as the radiatior and they work on the same principal, more or less, that is that minimal amount of air was helping the AC it would help the radiatior. So an electric fan would have kept things cooler from the start, and not have to overcome the temp spike that is needed to cause the fan to come on......

 

[Agnem]

My low temp sensor is 185 degrees and my high temp sensor is 220. I have a low speed override switch that will allow me to turn the fans on low speed if I want, regardless of if the truck is running or not. I use it more as a test switch than anything, because I have not yet added an indicator light to show that they have started up. In the winter, it's not uncommon for them to be shut off when I stop and get out. In the summer, they are always running on low speed when I stop. However, high speed to the best of my knowledge has never come on. My real temperature gauge shows 180 all the time. It will go up a smidge until the fans kick in, but then settles right down. I'm not sure what temp they turn off at, but it's probably less than 180, so as far as I can tell in the summer, once they come on they stay on. I'll get around to installing that indicator light some time, and then I will have a better idea of if they cycle or not. They run for about 5 minutes after shut down. I like this feature because it helps protect my fiberglass hood from a lot of radiant heat that I used to get. It also reduces the baking effect, since our engines tend to spike in temperature within minutes of shutting them down.

 

[freebird01]

ya know you make a good point mel about the baking effect...

ive noticed this with my truck that after climbing a hard hill and slowing down at the top close to an idle to coast down my truck will spike... im wondering if most of my issues i was telling you about before are stemming from a failing water pump?

guess ill find out soon. i got a new one sitting but it is a good theory..

cause the spike when stopped is caused by the coolant no longer moving....

*edit*

how do you have yours wired? do you have one temp sender signaling 2 relays? so 2 (low/hi) sensors and 4 relays(1 each fan each speed)?

 

[snicklas]

Mel,

What you have described, is exactally my thought. Your fans turn on at 185 and it settels back down to 180 fairly quickly. With the clutch fan, to start the lockup the water temp would be much higher than that. I would guess it would depend on how quickly the temp went up under load vs, what the fans could dissipate.

I know this would not be easy, but a really nice compairson would be to hook the 5er to the Lady Moose and take her out and work the truck and get a baseline of what is happening. Then swap the setup that is in the Moose Truck over and make the same run. I know it is not that simple, but I wonder what you would find. I would not be surpriesd if with the Moose Truck setup that you would see lower temps, bacause you start cooling at a lower temp than with the stock setup.

 

[freebird01]

my day wasnt a total bust...managed to find one fan thats correct....just need one more...for $10

picked up a 3g alt from the same car for $10....and a GM alt from a caddy for a different project also $10...

got to love u-pull its

 

[RLDSL]

With the setup I have in mine I have the mstech fan clutch and evans waterless coolant, so my fan clutch comes on early and I have coolant with a safety cushion that has a boiling point of 375 deg in a non pressurized system ( that combined with the massive rodney red rad . Maximum redudancy in safety . Whatever fan setup you are running, you just can't beat the extra margin of error that evans coolant gives you in time for getting safely pulled over before any kind of damage can happen.. On regular coolant once the needle starts to rise in a critical situation such as a fan failure, it's usually all over but the crying.

 

[RLDSL]

I might add speaking from experience , i had a conversion van runing a complete e fan conversion and thankfully I had a redundancy of a thermostatically controlled pusher fan on a seperate circuit or my engine would have burned down in Iowa on a trip, but that little 12" fan worked it's little heart out whan the bit flex a lite black max what have you super fan failed that I paid a fortune for, and that little tiny pusher fan saved the day. Had I not designed that redundancy in on a separate circuit, it would have been meltdown time. We had gone int an antique store ina little town and when we came out the main fan was toast and both ac units were going full tilt. Engine temp was elevated, but still safe thanks to a little forethought

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

>>> FAN SHROUD <<<

I have had a lot of experience in forced air movement and, usually, what seems good in theory seldom works in actual practice.

The idea of having a fan shroud is good in principle; but, when applied in the close confines between a radiator and engine-block, there is just not nearly enough distance to provide the necessary "tunnel" effect.

With the fans so close to the radiator as they must needs be, regardless of whether electric or mechanical, they will actually fair better without a shroud.

Go ahead and prove me wrong, and wrong I may very well be; but, the presence or absence of a fan shroud on the many many hard-pulling trucks that I have dealt with over many years has never shown me any difference in real cooling performance.

A shroud will actually hinder air movement at ground speed and a shroudless radiator will benefit from un-hindered air flow across the entire core structure.


Now, if the shroud were six or so feet long, with the fan at the little end, then I would say YES, a shroud is beneficial.

But, as close/short as the shroud needs be on a truck, about all it does is create a turbulence that hinders air movement, instead of helping it.


About the only real benefit I can see with a shroud is some measure of finger/hand protection.


I would not hesitate to use electric fans minus a shroud.



Another electric-fan option is the really huge single fan found on some models of the big Lincolns.

 

[LCAM-01XA]

On the shroud thing, it is needed alright, but not cause of the reasons stated so far - it's there not to ensure uniform flow through the entire radiator core, but more so to separate the air coming through the radiator from that already pushed out back by the fan. In other words without a shroud the fan is working partly as a puller for fresh air from in front of the radiator and partly as a mixer for the air that's already in the engine bay, whereas with a shroud present the air around the engine cannot back-draft between the fan and the radiator so all the cfm the fan is moving gets used to pulling fresh cool air from the outside. To this end, these fans that Freebird posted a picture of actually do have shrouds, tho they are strictly fan blade shrouds and not so much radiator shrouds in the traditional sense of the word - those ring things around the actual fan blades, those are shrouds, they are there to prevent the turbulence around the ends of the blades and the back-draft effect it creates, so when you plop those assemblies right against the radiator they will only pull air from outside without any interference from the air already swooshing in every which way around the engine.

Now the presence or absence of a radiator shroud and its effect on the airflow forced through the radiator by the truck's speed, that makes sense with the thermal-clutch fans when the fan blade is barely turning until the rad heats up good, but with a setup like mine where the fan blade is spinning full-speed all the time and pulls more cfm at any given vehicle speed than get pushed through the grille, now for those situations a radiator shroud is nice to have cause without it the fan will be the airflow equivalent of an eggs-beater kitchen tool

 

[93cc7.3]

slightly off topic but not really
me and my friend were talking yesterday and came up with a non traditional electric fan setup.
120 millimeter computer fans built into a grid to cover the radiator and ac condenser we did the math with 24 fans that's 3200 cfm and the fans sell for 8 bucks for 2 then you wouldn't have to worry about shrouds and such