I have personal experience with two fans.
Rigid fan 17515 and flex fan 17015. See links below.
http://www.derale.com/rigidfans.shtml
http://www.derale.com/hdflexfans.shtml
The rigid fan requires trimming on the leading outside corner. This trimming
is required to create clearance between the fan and the radiator. Even with
the trimming, the clearance is only 3/8 inches. This fan cools GREAT, but
your car will sound like a Cessna on a full power takeoff run. This fan
howls, its NOISY, but it moves a ton of air. I have fiberglass LAT hood
with the stock center latch. If I rev the engine I can see the corners of
the hood flex up from air pressure generated by this fan!!!! I let my car
idle in my garage on a very hot summer day. The garage started at 101F.
After 45 minutes my water temps were 205 F and a temp gauge sitting on a
bench 5 feet in front of the car was reading an air temp of 104F.
If you can live with the noise, you can kiss cooling problems buh bye. After
6 months I decided to try some other solutions.
The flex fan, was reviewed by TEAE on their website.
It does not require any trimming but you must make a spacer to move the fan
forward. Even after this, the blades still hit the upper radiator hose. I
had to find a hose with a different curve at the thermostat end and then
graft it onto a section of the stock hose. I used a brass GANO filter as
the joint between the two hoses.
This fan cools well and is quieter than the rigid fan. I have not done the
rigourous tests that I did with the rigid. I had this fan on the car before
I found all my other cooling system defects (low water pump flow) With this
fan the car cooled well at idle and low speed, but I was getting hot on the
hiway. I switched to the rigid fan to try to fix the hiway problem. It did
nothing. Then I put an Edelbrock water pump in and the problem went away.
I left the rigid fan in and the cooling perf has been exceptional.
So you get a tradeoff with noise vs original appearance.
I am currently running an experiment with a third fan It is a Ford fan but
not the Maverick fan. I bought if thru someplace I found on a web search.
It was sold to me under the p/n C9DZ-8600-A but it was NOT the Maverick fan.
It has 6 steel blades with 1.25 inches of pitch, It is 15 inches in
diameter. The blades are staggered for quieter performance.
The only stress I have encountered with this fan, was getting stuck in a
traffic jam one Friday afternoon. We were stuck in a line to get onto the
freeway on a stretch of roads with traffic lights. Just a mess. The car
never moved more than 5 mph.
We were stuck for over 30 minutes. The temp got up to a hair over 200
degrees.
The outside air temps were in the low 80's. I would say the performance is
not as good as the Derale rigid fan but it is much quieter. I intend to run
this fan all summer and see what happens. I plan to drive it up to the
Historic races in August. Sitting in some of those traffic jams should give
some good data.
All the temps quoted above, were on my dash gauge. I have compared the guage
to a thermocouple in the hot tank of the radiator and with an IR temp gun.
All three agreed within 3 degrees F.
Oh yeah, The Derale fans sell for around $40.
Erich
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