Ok, I am looking to go back to an e-fan on my 91 vert. I used to have a permacool fan on there with the stock rad and no shroud and the gain of availible HP was nice. The downfall was that the A/C wouldn't get really cold at idle or in stopped traffic and the temps would rise. Now I already know that most of that was caused by no shroud being there and the air couldn't flow across the condensor and through the radiator. I now have a Fluidyne radiator, and was thinking about using a black magic fan, or another e-fan and building a custom AL fan shroud.

Does anyone have some first hand input on e-fan performance with the use of A/C in stop and go traffic? Thanks

 

i had an electric fan on my car and took it off after it did not cool that well.. i found the temps to be higher.. i was not useing the shroud... but i see many ppl with a fan and no shroud... how well does that cool? i would love you get rid of my fan but not at the cost of higher runnign temps... what have others experenced... especially Soul.. since he has 600hp and a 16" permacool fan....?????

 

I am running the Mazdaspeed '7504' radiator and a Spal 16" curved blade fan. The fan is rated at 2070cfm. I have the fan mounted on a narrow strip of soft foam about 1/2 inch above the surface of the radiator. The foam provides a seal against the surface of the radiator.
I have also packed the perimeter of the radiator with foam to provide as much seal as possible against the a/c condensor. It's only possible to seal about 2/3 of the perimeter. But I had to do all of the 'efficiency' stuff I could to get acceptable performance.

Now, on the highway without the a/c, the fan almost never runs and with the a/c, the fans runs intermittantly. Anything down to about 30mph seems to be fine. In stop and go traffic with the a/c on, the fan runs a lot. But it does cycle and is able to maintain temps at 1/2 way on the temperature gauge and the a/c stays cold.

If I did it again, I'd get the 16" straight blade Spal fan rated at 2400cfm.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the stock belt driven fan would pull twice the air that any of these electric fans will. To make the e-fan work you're going to have to engineer it right.


Rob

 

Yup, that is what I figured. I had a black magic on my Project 86 TII with a Griffin radiator and it worked really well, but there wasn't A/C involved.

I think I will just build an aluminum shroud to go on my Fluidyne and then mount a fan into it. With the correct e-fan, I should be able to cool enough to make it work.

 

The E-fan should be wired to the A/C compressor clutch switch. It should turn on any time the clutch kicks in. This should help some people who rely solely on the thermoswitch. Or, just use a cheapo slimline pusher fan, attached to the condensor, wired separate from your normal fan, relayed to the compressor clutch. Mazda chose that route on some cars(I believe A/T? equipped cars).

Also, unless you have recently charged the A/C, don't rule out that its just the fan. Could need a freon topoff.

Most electric fans do not need a shroud because they mount snugly with the radiator. They pull the air directly through the radiator and don't just splash it around like the mech fan. This is one reason why the mechanical fan's shroud is mandatory.

I like the foam that you mention as a seal. Most of the time I use it to prevent damage to the radiator because of loose electric fan zip ties. The zip ties sometimes break or skip a tooth and the electric fan can damage the radiator. This is only an issue with cheap fans and poorly mounted fans. Plus, it is always best to pick the highest quality fan your namebrand sells. So, the recommendation to use the 2400cfm over the 2000cfm is justifiable.

I like what UR did with their project car. But, the cost of the shroud/efan.......is a little too expensive.
http://unorthodoxracing.com/projrx7.html

It is also good to compare mfg specs. The permacool/spal/hayden/flexalite websites have lots of info. They also list economy/slimline/generic fans that should be avoided. For example, there are fans that are rated 2000cfm and 2800cfm, both being 16". Always use the best one, that the company you choose offers.

Which permacool fan did you use on the vert?
http://permacool.com/Catalog/Cat_page18.html

 

I have a black magic on a OEM radiator (NA), and haven't had any problems with the AC at all.

 

Does anyone have the numbers for the cfm's for the various electric fans? (Ex. The Fiero's, Blackmagic's, etc.)

 

Black magic is around (+)2700 CFM

 

RE: DeadRx7Conv
"Most electric fans do not need a shroud because they mount snugly with the radiator. They pull the air directly through the radiator and don't just splash it around like the mech fan. This is one reason why the mechanical fan's shroud is mandatory.

I like the foam that you mention as a seal. Most of the time I use it to prevent damage to the radiator because of loose electric fan zip ties. The zip ties sometimes break or skip a tooth and the electric fan can damage the radiator. This is only an issue with cheap fans and poorly mounted fans. Plus, it is always best to pick the highest quality fan your namebrand sells. So, the recommendation to use the 2400cfm over the 2000cfm is justifiable. "


I made good solid mounting brakets to keep the fan off of the radiator. Then I used the soft foam to provide a seal. Without the foam too much air was coming in around the edges of the fan. The nice thing about a full shourd however, is that you use the full surface area of the radiator. As described above, our applications use only about 60% of the radiators cooling capacity when the car is not moving.

Rob

 

 

That is a black magic e-fan. As usual vaughnc has pics of everything. That is the same radiator I have as well.

The freon is not an issue. I recently topped it off (3 months ago)

I might go with the black magic, but I would rather just fab up an aluminum shroud and mount oit to the radiator then mount the e-fan to that.

The e-fan I used was the permacool 771-19115 16"

I think I will try the black magic since I have one already sitting in the garage

 

Anyone know where I can order a black magic fan from? Even better, anyone selling one? =)

 

eBay, Jegs, Summit etc...

 

.

 

I was running a fan off an chevy lumina van, the ones with a windshield that goes for days, and it sucked air. In regular stock and go traffic never seen higher than 1/4 on an s4 gauge. That fan is prolly one of the best one speed fans I've seen. Not too think and covered almost all of the rad, can't cover the whole thing cause of the hoses. I'll post a pic in the am

 

Wow, resurrecting an 8 year old thread to try to sell a fan? That's a new one.

 

Oh jeeze didn't even realize that when I replied