Hello All,
Just thought that I would fill y'all in on my newest
'improvement'. Now most of you know that I HATE the sound of the
seven blade fan..that whinnning yuck!! I know the usual thing to do is
to switch to the 4-blade with the spacer. But it just bothered me to
have that damn fan going ALL-THE-TIME, needed or not.
Enter J.C. whitney....I purchased their 11" slimline fan with
automatic adjustable thermostat. I think the whole shebang was about
70 bucks?? The fan is just under 3" deep which unfortunately is about
a half inch to deep to clear my fan clutch-when mounted in the center of the
rad. To solve this I mounted it off-center slightly. THe waterpump
shaft is already offcenter towards the drivers side so I mounted the
fan offset to the passenger side.
Heres what you gotta do.
Undo the screws holding on your fan shroud and slide it foraward
out of the way.
Now ,if you have small hands you can get a wrench in there to remove
the four bolts holding the fan on. Remove fan. NOw you can also remove the
fan shroud. I had to because of my offset mounting.
Next slide the fan in and wiggle it around looking for the best
mounting position.-most of the rad covered without hitting the old fan clutch.
THe rad mounts at its four corners by pushing these little plastic zip-
strip like things through the fins in the rad and sliding a lock-type washer
down to tighen things up. The fan sits flush against the rad and is held
firmly. I think the flush fit will be great for cooling and negates the need
for the fan shroud. Though this size fan will fit inside the fan shrould if
you can mount it centered on the rad.
Next you have to find a place to mount the black control box. Its
about half the size of a pack of smokes. I mounted it in the space where my
voltage reg. used to live. Now you have to hook up the wiring. It comes with
its own wiring 'harness' that plugs into the control box. Next you hook
acouple wires to ground one to the batt. and one wire to a place that sees
12v only when the key is in the on position. This is the control wire and
is there to keep the fan from running down the baattery when you are parked.
I wired mine straight to the batt. for now.
The temp sensor is also pushed into the fins on the rad. I mounted
mine away from the fan on a part of the rad that is not covered by the fan.
The control box has a little adjust screw for setting when the fan comes
on. Unfortunately there are no temp markings on the unit. To adjust the
fan on temp I ran the engine with a candy thermometer in the rad and adjusted
the screw till the fan turned on around 190-195f.
So far everything appears to be working great. The electric fan
is loud enough that I can hear it at idle so I know when its working.
It appears to cool very well. I let the temp get up to ~205 then
turned the fan on and it cooled the engine right down to ~180 in almost
no time- and this was while keeping the rpm's at about 1500 in my garage.
And most importantly no more fan noise!!!! NIce quite car..no
horsepower being robbed by an alwyas on seven balde fan. ANd I swear the
car revvs up quicker.
Sorry this was so long but I hope it helps people.
Daniel 69 2000
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