Converting Hot Air to Electric Fan

[fgordon]

I can certainly tell you what to stay away from, the racetronics dual harness is pretty much usless for us....Tell you what your best bet is an 87 electric fan...should get you down to 180 or so. As I mentioned to you I have the flex-a-lite 220 dual fans, got em at jeg's. They fit nicely and you can use the "through the radiaor mounts" which makes it a really easy mount. Yhey also pull about 20 or so amps so they will run fine on one relay. .

Do you have a part number on that setup from Jegs? I'm trying to convert my 84 to electric....Thanks

Frank

 

[BRAD_PADGETT]

Tenright will have to get you the JEGS fan part number. I used an 87 fan with the through the radiator fan tie kit(Auto zone part number(900210). The wiring harness came from Caspers Electronics-Fan installation kit-84/85 turbo regal using 87 ECM(part number 102066). I used an 87 Cullass V8 radiator hold down plate in order to hold the f-body radiator in place. This plate is a direct bolt on with no mods at all. The Caspers kit tells you how to use a spare connector by the MAP and where the other end by the ECM. No need to go through the firewall at all in order to connect the fan kit to the ECM.

The Caspers kit makes my fan run based on the ECM. My chip knows I have a 160 thermostat. The fan kicks on at 168 and shuts down at 160. My car now runs cool and the performance is improved with the consistent temps. It was 60 degrees out today and the car stayed in the 160's temperature. I will have to agree that when it is hot-Tenright is correct-180 degrees which is alot better than the 210 I was at.

 

[tenright]

well...I actually broke down last night and took all the fan stuff I acumulated over the past few months and came up with a setup that works and I like..

here goes

Flex-a-lite 220 pullers (400-220 ) at jegs
the 0-260 degree thurmostat from advanced auto
Racetronix dual fan harness

I originally did not use the racetronix harness because...well I had no idea how to hook the thing up (No instructions included) and there is just crappy support for us hot air guys. I was using a basic fan harness till I melted the 30 amp fuse. Anyway I gathered up all my stuff and went to work. I stripped out the fan side of the racetronix harness leaving only the two 12v wires. Thick blue and thick white. The big ground and the thin ground were not needed and frankly confusing and stupid. I ran the fan grounds to the lower radiator support, though any ground will do. I connected the blue to one fan and the white to the other. Then I tapped into an ignition switched wire, in this case I have a heated O2 sensor and that has an switched ignition wire. Ran the wire from the switched ignition to the thermostat and then hooked the other side to the ignition wires on the racetronix harness. (small red, and small blue wires)....

The other side of the racetronix harness has 2 black (both ground) one large white, and one large blue (battery). I tied the thin black wires together and ran them to a ground screw by the battery (any ground point will do). Then ran the 12v wires to the positive battery. Total 1.5 hours including hooking it up and testing it before actually installing it.

This all sounds complicated but it's not. Once you strip out all the crap that is only usefull if you have an 86/87 from the racetronix harness, it works very well. Once it's all in simply crank up the engine, the fans will come on immediately...turn the thermastat till they go off, continue to do this untill they come on at the temp you want....The benefit of this approach if you can't see it already is if you use 2 thermostats you can turn on one fan at say 160, and the other at say 180....Actually the possabilities are endless once it is working. You can modify them to do just about anything.....

 

[87GN_70GS]

If you have cooling issues at idle and you want a serious fan that moves some major air (4500+ cfm), get the fan from a 98 Lincoln Mark VIII (Motorcraft RF-64). The 97 Cougar/T-bird (Motorcraft RF-24, $140 from www.rockauto.com) moves just a bit less, but still more than any dual fans. Big airflow requires big power and amps; these draw over 100+ amps at startup and about 35+ continous.

Also, there are some slim-line Spal electric fans that can be installed inside the mechanical fan shroud as a booster fan to supplement the mechanical fan.