At 12:23 AM 11/27/2003 -0500, Rush wrote:
>Automotive
>fans, on grand scale of fans, don't move a whole lot of air.
I think Jon is on to something here. The engineers probably calculated the
amount of power necessary to move enough air to adequately cool the
radiators, and concluded that electric motors, especially 12 volt motors,
would be unacceptably large and/or bulky for this application, or would
require an unacceptably large alternator. Hydraulic motors pack a LOT of
power into a very small package, so that's what they used. It makes a
perverse kind of sense, and, from a mechanical engineering standpoint, is
kind of cool. I wouldn't want to have to maintain it, though.
Dave C
|