Jeff's Review of Electric Cooling Fan
Name: Jeff
Email: [email protected]
Product: Electric cooling fan
Model: 16" puller, 1949cfm
Store: JC Whitney
Price: $100 w/ thermostat, $70 w/o
Car: '95 S14
Worth_it: Yes
Difficulty_Rating: 6
Date: April 29, 2000
Problems
[I wrote this the day after the install and I was pretty excited, so please excuse the profanity.]
after hearing all this talk about how great it is to do the electric cooling fan conversion, here's my little story.
so i got home last night after work (6:30 or so), and viola, i see my electric radiator fan just in from the mail. my crank-driven fan's clutch has been stuck 'on' for like 3 months now, and the car was loud as hell, making a damn whooshing noise everywhere i drove, making my car sound real stupid, kinda like a debris blower.
so i open up the box, take out all the parts, and holy shit, there's a lot of stuff in this kit... so i read through it, and it looks like i'll have to rip out my crank-driven fan, remove the fan clutch, make it fit in somewhere, wire up their thermostat, find various leads power in the ignition 'on' position and battery power and ground. ok, so i figure this is gonna be hella difficult, but doable.
i go out to the garage, intending just to check if the electric fan is gonna fit... and shit, there's not only the crank fan, but also another small electric fan from the factory... there's no way i can put the aftermarket fan behind the electric fan. well, maybe... i guess there's only one way to find out.
so i remove the plastic bellypan, and rip out the mechanical fan shroud. damn, it's not coming out cuz the mechanical fan is getting in the way. so i jam my skinny little arm in there, unbolt some bolts while making gashes in my arm, slicing my flesh against the plastic shroud. so i get the fan out, out comes the shroud. so now i have to take the fan clutch out. shit those bolts are not only tight, but when i try to remove them, the freakin thing turns cuz it's on the crank. damn, i need an impact wrench, yeah, the pneumatic ones. or i can use a breaker bar as a low-buck impact wrench. ok, i extend my wrench with the bar, and give the bar a good slap against the bolt. woohoo, it comes out. so i do that to four bolts, and the clutch comes out.
i look at the factory electric cooling fan, and holy shit, the wires going into it are completely sliced! it looks like the wires were dangling, and the mechanical fan sliced through the wires. this broken fan wasn't doing a damn thing for me! but then i think about it... this thing isn't doing any good in here, so i might as well take it out, and yeah! now i can mount my aftermarket fan. so now that the shroud, mechanical fan, fan clutch, and factory fan were out of the car, whoa, lots of space in the engine bay now! it's like an old american car.
i attach the aftermarket fan to the radiator using zip-tie sticks... kinda sketchy if you ask me, but it seems to work cuz everyone else does it too.
so now i gotta wire the damn thing. the fan came with a thermostat that i'm supposed to poke through the radiator. oh brother, this is gonna look like a real hackjob now. but then i think about the factory fan... that thing used to be controlled by the ECU to turn on and off depending on the AC switch and coolant temperature... so why not just tap into that? i look at my sliced wires, study the manual a bit, and yeah, there's a wire in there that will be off when the engine's cool, and turn on when it's >210F. Sweet... i'll just use that. but the factory fan only drew <7.5A, and my aftermarket needs like 10.5A. shit, maybe i'll just change the fuse... but then i really don't want to hackjob this either and make my wires melt. i remember that i have a 12A relay that i swiped from the scrap bin at my old workplace... yeah, i'll use that! i use the sliced wires to trigger the relay, supply a good power source direct from the battery, and wire that to the fan. i also have to hook up a ground wire to the fan. whew, got that all figured out.
slap everything together, everything works fine! damn, that's a first, for sure.
it's now 12:30AM, tired, sweaty, and hungry cuz i forgot to eat dinner. pretty much, it took me 6 hours to install this mother. i take it for a spin, and the first thing i notice, of course, is that the engine doesn't make that damned whooshing noise anymore. all i hear is the nice humm of a healthy engine. i ramp it onto a freeway, and man, it revs so much nicer and with more power now! it's like i just popped a furball out of my exhaust. damn, this feels good. why didn't i fix this before?
so yeah, this is definitely one of my more difficult installs, requiring an equal amount of blood, sweat, and brains. i'm happy with it cuz not only was it a pretty much an undocumented swing in the dark install, i managed to do it cleanly without hacking anything. and it made a huge-ass difference in reducing cabin noise and increasing power. i bet my gas mileage will go up a bit too, now that i'm not creating massive amounts of wind drag all the time.
Tips
Thoughts
If your fan clutch is broken, do this conversion! If it isn't broken, you might not feel that it's worth it.
Other
You can either put two 10" or one 16" into your radiator. One 16" covers more area than two 10", so I went with the one 16".