So I was talking to my buddy about cooling and how you've gotta have a good shroud if you wanna go the e-fan route.

He brought up a neat idea that I hadn't thought about (and that I didn't find when searching just now): now that I've pulled the A/C cooler, why don't I just mount an e-fan in FRONT of the radiator and have it push through? A shroud wouldn't be necessary (I don't think), since the pipes snake through the radiator, right? I think that a no-shroud implementation would also work better for cooling when driving (as in, when the fan's not even on) since there wouldn't be a shroud behind it obstructiong the flow of air going through.

Just wondering what you guys thought of this. That would make even more room in front (not that an e-fan takes up a lot of room, lol), and I wouldn't have to worry about chopping my fingers off when looking under the hood. Road damage might seem like an issue, but I think that there's enough protection between the oil cooler there and the cover on bottom.

 

Yeah, but now there is an obstruction in front of the radiator impeding the airflow.

I ran "pusher fans" (they were shrouded) in my Z and it worked fine.
Be aware that in push mode the fan is only @80% as efficient as in pull mode, so make sure the resulting CFM is enough.

 

interesting, thx for the head's up

 

Electric fans are less efficient at pushing air through then pulling air. You still would only be cooling a small portion of the rad when mounting the efan to the front of the rad without a shroud, especially since you can't have a shround on the front of the rad.

Im glad im not that only one thinking of this. My thought on this is the fans housing and blades, even though the fan should free wheel, do cause resistance and so does the shroud. All this will have negitive effects on cooling while driving but the amount of the effect may not be noticable.

As you know, sharp corners are not good for airflow which is why the stock shroud is designed the way it is. I had the idea of making a shroud and fan setup that only covered 80% of the radiator which would still leave a good portion of the rad open for airflow while driving. I forget of the numbers I came up with for how open it would be but I thought that would be the best and the fact that the e-fan is only used during low speed crusing or idle situations, and the engine HP is very limited at those times, the cooling efficiency of the fan and shroud setup covering 80% of the rad would be well enough.

Your right that the effects of this would probubly not be noticed. Its funny how I thought of this a months ago and have everything writen down on paper some where about this situation.