stevie1020

does anyone think or know if a mustang 5.0 e fan will work better or just as good as the clutch fan on a rotary?

iluvmy86

iTrader: (1)

this probley wont answer your question but here is just some insight on e-fans themselves. after reading that i decided to just stay with the stock fan myself.

http://www.aaroncake.net/RX-7/efanmyth.htm

stevie1020

hmm nvm then ill just keep the clutch fan and add this fan to the radiation with a timmer or something to help cool after shut off

skatingsamurai

my rx7 already has a stock e-fan....do all model have the stock e-fan? ill check the archive. if they all do then is there really a nessesity to add another?

Alex Rodriguez

iTrader: (137)

this thread will get ugly if i dont fill in the INFO here...anyways

-for an e-fan set up you need one that can pull atleast 2400cfm- stock i believe dont qoute me its between 1400 to 1700cfm

-you must wire a relay to it-check aaroncakes archives theres a DIY

Ok some people say you gain horsepower out of doing this you may but u wont feel a damn diffrence. The reason most people go with an EFAN set up is to eliminate less stress on the waterpump, to clean up the engine bay, and to have a better control of cooling on stop and go traffic. There really no big diffrence between the stock unit and the efan set up. Its all up to you and your budget.

I recommend using a thermostat switch to turn it on and off when it hits your desired cooling temps. Also when you get your efan make sure you have some sort of shrouding on it or the efan set up will be no use.

Be smart dont trash your stocker go to the local u pull it spend 25-35 bucks on a set up and try it if not you can always go back to your stocker and sell the efan to someone else

There are numerious threads on here about E fan set ups --START SEARCHING PEOPLES IDEAS

-The best e-fan to use are the FOR TAURUS or PONTIAC FIERO e-fans, you can try others but they have to pull atleast the same amount of air or more- I went with a lincoln town car yet i need to run 2 relays on mine

-DONT JUST HOOK IT UP STRAIGHT TO A SWITCH OR YOU WILL BE ASKING FOR A FIRE

NZConvertible

Some FC's came with an auxiliary electric fan that runs when the A/C's on and if the engine gets really hot. This discussion isn't about adding an electric fan, it's about replacing the main thermoclutch fan with an electric one.

Better cooling control is a load of BS. The rest of your post was spot on.

RotaMan99

After or before reading that, read this.
http://howto.globalvicinity.com/gv_w...=149&co=1&vi=1

Yes and no. Depending on how much the clutch is engauged and at what rpm. At full engagment at idle, the stock fan is pulling around 600cfm.

Please read the link I provided and read the links branching off that page.

The stock fan can consume more HP then the E-fan.

Please tell me why these are the best fans to use? I hate posts like this.

Alex Rodriguez

iTrader: (137)

Ok to see that you are trying to prove a point . First ask anyone who has a e-fan set up and ask someone who has the stocker unit. Tell them to tell you a diffrence in power they have notice. Not one will tell you that with such a set up you gain power or loose power..... Unless its with a dyno. Its stupid simple if you have so many belt and pullies and you remove them all and just keep the essential one belt set up ...IE..waterpump, alt, underdrive

YOU WILL GAIN POWER!, but with a smogg pump, a/c, and powersteering in the picture, please explain to me if you just remove the stock fan how the hell you create power if any ...............1hp when you eliminate everything.

Once again if you read the FSM and the archives you will see that a standard ran e-fan set up on a JINKY altenator and bad electronic set up you will actually loose power.

The reason these 2 fans are the best is because they are direct fitment to your stock radiator DUHH, no we are gonna do tests on all e-fans at the junkyard big or small to see which ones work better.

Also to conclude my "WHY ARE THESE TWO FANS GOOD TO USE" theory not everyone here has money, they cant go to a store and buy a $200 efan, so the most common used one on the RX7CLUB is the ford taurus and pontiac fiero.

Oh dont just hate posts like this ,next time get your facts right before you start "HATING POST LIKE THIS"

Alex Rodriguez

iTrader: (137)

Jason how is it a Load of BS, i mean if i am at a stop light on a 110 degree day for 5 min at idle...are you saying the stocker ,which someone said 600cfm on the post
compared to a 2400cfm avg. will cool better. How?

SpooledupRacing

here is my .02

the electric fan should only be done if u want to clean up the engine bay or if u have a bad clutch fan.. you will gain no power and a properly working clutch fan will work just as well as a properly working e-fan..

I personally will be putting an e-fan on mine is 3600cfm with low amp draw so it shoudl be VERY effective.. I will run it on a thermotime switch and I know I will have no problems..

however I will keep my stock fan and shroud for a while atleast just in case I have a problem..

and I dont have any electric fan on my car anywhere that I know of its a 86 base

btw I had a 5.0 mustang and it had a clutch fan like our stock one.. so I dont knwo what year had an electric fan!

RotaMan99

You obveously didn't read the link I provided. I felt a difference and I have spoken to a few others that have also felt a difference.

Here is a direct link to GlobalVicinity.com. Compairs the stock fan to e-fan.
http://howto.globalvicinity.com/gv_w...=191&co=1&vi=1

Wow. Just WOW. I have tested and researched electric fan setups for years you obveously have no idea how to do the math. Even a 20amp fan will not cost you 1hp.

I will supply you with the link again. This tells you how much power you can gain.
http://howto.globalvicinity.com/gv_w...=149&co=1&vi=1

hmmmmmm where are you getting $200 from?
Here is a link compairing e-fans. You search and do the price checking.
http://howto.globalvicinity.com/gv_w...=132&co=1&vi=1

Im not to fond of putting old electrical parts into my car.

I have more facts about e-fans then you do buddy. If you want. I can start getting VERY technical on this subject. I will hate posts like yours all day long because you have no facts to back up your ****.

stevej88na

For easy reference, here's a chart from the comparison RotaMan linked to (an estimation article I posted a while ago). For more info there check the article out.

To try to answer stevie1020's original question, I suspect the Mustang fan will work ok most of the time, but the stock fan probably provides a safety buffer that the Mustang fan cannot. I can't give better answers without knowing the fan's specs. You can get a pretty good idea with the chart above, where the blue line is the stock fan, and the red dot is a Black Magic 150.

SpooledupRacing, I bet that 3600CFM fan paired with a PWM speed controller can make up for much of the electric fan's bad wrap!

edit: the blue dots represent max CFM at 800, 2000, 3250, and 4000 engine RPM.

SpooledupRacing

what is a PWM speed controller

I am interested in that now lol!!

stevej88na

Oops, that should probably be "rap" - eh.

A PWM controller could vary the fan's speed based on conditions, like the stock system does, so it's not either on or off. ReTED linked to one a while back, and it's a project I'm considering as well:
http://howto.globalvicinity.com/gv_w...i=81&co=1&vi=1

SpooledupRacing

gottcha thx for that

unek87

dont mean to h/j but i was wondering. i know with some of the older domestic they could change out the clutch fan blades for a after market metal kind with more blades and it be a lil lighter .do we have such a upgrade

slo

iTrader: (1)

the taurus fan is used by many hot rodders, on everything from custom hot rods to jeeps, there was a magazine test showing that it had over 4000 CFM with over a 30 amp draw on its fastest speed (it has at least 2 speeds, maybee 3), it is the single fan from the standard 86-94 taurus, not the SHO or newer dual fan, and its pretty much the same fan used on all big fords of that era, probably identicle to the 5.0 and later mustang fan.

They are available brand new aftermarket from ebay for @ 75 bones

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/RADIA...00718416QQrdZ1

NZConvertible

I've got a few comments on that page.

"The viscous clutch uses a fluid that gets thicker as it gets hotter, gradually allowing less and less slip between the engine and the fan, it will never completely disengages, it is always consuming some power."

People make a big deal about this, but they don't seem to realize how little power the free-wheeling fan is using. Start a cold engine and let the fan settle into a constant speed, and then stick your hand in the blades. The fan will stop dead and you'll barely feel it. Hold it in your hand and you can clearly feel how little drag the clutch is placing on the engine. It's so small I just have to laugh at people who blab on about the fan's parasitic drag. The truth is the only time the fan is taking an amount of power from the engine that's worth discussing, it's because it's needed.

"...because the stock fan attaches to the water pump pulley, it can cause belt slippage on the pulley, especially when the air pump and accessories are removed."

A dual-belt alternator pulley and two belts will result in zero slippage, and is a lot cheaper than an e-fan conversion.

"Assuming the alternator converts mechanical power to electrical power with 85% efficiency (i.e. to get 1W of electricity you need 15% more mechanical power, or 1.15W)..."

There's a slight error in your math. You never add or subtract with percentages, you only multiply or divide. If something is 85% (0.85) efficient that the extra power required is 1 / 0.85 = 1.176 or ~18% more.

"The stock fan can consume more HP then the E-fan."

The fact is you have to do the same amount of work to move a certain amount of air, and that work is done by the engine. The actual rate that work is done (i.e. power) at a particular instant depends on how the fan is being operated (thermoclutch or thermostatically controlled electric motor), but the average work done is going to depend on the efficiency of the fan itself and (for e-fans) the efficiency of the mechanical-electrical-mechanical energy conversion. Nothing about the stock fan's design makes me think it's an inefficient one, so in all likelihood the stock fan uses less power on average than a good electric one (and not all of them are good). In the real world though this isn't really going to make any difference to your car's performance.

Personally I'd be very wary of anyone claming they "felt a difference", because the actual power involved is so small. It's a well-known fact that if you want to feel a difference from a supposed improvement, you will...

That's not what you said. You claimed "better cooling control", which is a pretty vague term. Do you mean better cooling? The stock fan has no problem keeping temps right down near the thermostat opening temp, so how can you get better than that? Or do you mean better control as in it keeps the temp within a narrow band? When idling, with a thermoclutch the fan settles at speed that provides the required airflow, and temp barely moves, but with an e-fan the temp constantly rises and falls as the thermostat controls it. How is that "better"? It really makes no difference to how the engine runs but it's still ridiculous to call it better when it's clearly the opposite.

As for all the airflow figures thrown about, instead of comparing the estimated performance of the stock fan and the claimed performance of aftermarket fans, look at actual performance instead. The stock fan keeps the engine cool, period. Have you actually sat idling for five minutes on a 110degF day and had a problem with the stock fan?

stevej88na

Thanks for the correction info NZ, I think that bit of mathematical mayhem was my own doing when I was simplifying the arithmetic there. Oops! I was able to log in and update it myself. FYI, if you or anyone else sees an obvious mistake like that on a GV page, please log in and fix it, the site lets us do that.

As for the stock fan's efficiency, it's true electric fans have a handicap there, but interestingly, the stock fan's gap between shroud and blade is so large (necessarily large too, because the engine moves around while the radiator does not) that in simulation, if the stock fan's shroud gap is narrowed from the mid-range gap in the FSM to the BM 150's gap, then the CFM at the same static pressure increases by 40-50%. It seems efficiency had to be sacrificed for real world mechanical limitations.

Finally, the estimation page is between a simulated Black Magic 150 and a simulated stock fan, not a simulated stock fan vs. Black Magic claims. The Black Magic claims 2800 CFM while the simulation shows 1760 CFM at peak pressure (check out the "sanity check" section for more, I did that sanity check to make sure the simulations were within a reasonable ballpark, and they were).

You're absolutely right though, the stock fan does a good job maintaining operating temperature, and at least with a BM 150, I'd worry about the ability to cool the car on uphill climbs, when airspeed is low and engine speed is high.

edit: speaking of manufacturer's claims, the 3600 CFM fan is probably the rating at zero static pressure; we'd have to simulate it to get a better idea of what it can do!

RotaMan99

Thanks for pointing the out! That sentence's intent was to remind people that the fan will always cause some drag. I reworded that sentence. Thanks again.

Yes your right, one issue I and a few others have found with a dual alt pulley is you have to keep tightening the belts sometimes. For some reason on mine and some members engines the belts start to squeal and need to be tightend again after a few thousand miles.

The bearing on my FD alt is also gone from tightening the belts all the time. I could care less about the bearing for now, alt still chargers

Saying that, I don't have a mechanical fan.

Im sure this is not a problem with many other members.

Ya OPPS! haha. Making me look bad. What you thinking! :-P

I do agree. However, if you are sitting at a stop light or maybe at the track or just about to get on the on ramp to the highway from a backroad, the clutch will not be fully disengauged so if you accel hard, the fan could be taking up more power then you would like.

Im not talking about driving around casually since you don't care about how much power you have then or even how much power the fan could be robbing which will actually be very very little considering the RPMs of the motor are usually below 2500 rpm.

The electric fan while its off driving around casually will not make any noticable difference compaired to the stock fan, but, when the e-fan is off and you accell hard from say around 30-40mph, you will not have the mech fan taking up any power. Going 30-40, depending on the air temps will not be fast enough to cool the motor with airflow alone, so the clutch will most likley have to engauge more to keep the air flow through the radiator up high enough while moving at those speeds. I don't know what percentage the clutch engaugement will be at though, maybe 40-50%?

The difference was small but it was there. The engine was able to rev up quicker while driving without the clutch fan and with the e-fan off.

RotaMan99

First of all, the engine will not heat up very quickly at idle. So the estimated 600CFM from the stock clutch fan at 80% engaugment will probably be enough. Now I don't have a FMIC, but, my guess, going out on a limb, is that 600cfm from the clutch fan may not be enough to properly cool the motor at idle or slightly higher rpms, say around 1500-2000. This is where an e-fan could help since a proper high cfm fan should be able to pull more air through the rad at lower rpms compaired to the stocker at low rpms.

In no way am I or Steve saying that an e-fan will cool the engine better in any situation compaired to the stock clutch fan since the stock fan has a much higher CFM rate possibility then any e-fan I know of. The e-fan does have some advantages over the stocker as the stocker does over the e-fan

Every e-fan CFM rating I see is always at zero static pressure. I really don't know why. They could atleast up the static pressure a bit to give a more resonable rate.

NZConvertible

I've had a dual-belt pulley on my FC for several years and I had one on my HB Cosmo for several years also, and I never had that problem. That's just my experience though. I can't think of any reason why that should be required. What's different compared to a single belt that would cause it? I certainly wouldn't consider it a risk associated with the mod.

I could just as easily argue that if have an e-fan and you sit stationary for any period of time and then accelerate hard, the fan might be switched on when you do, and so is drawing power from the engine. It might also be off, but if it isn't and the light goes green do you wait for you fan to turn off?

If you're doing 30-40mph, the fan going to be drawing very little power because the clutch would be barely engaged). The amount of power required to accelerate the car will be massively more than what the fan might be taking.

Same argument as before. If your driving conditions require the thermoclutch fan to be partially engaged then they'd also require the e-fan to be cycling on and off. I also highly doubt the fan clutch would need that much engagement at those speeds. You only need ~5hp to travel at a constant 40mph on level ground, which is hardly going to be stressing the cooling system.

Sorry, but butt-dyno results are just not good enough in this discussion. I've never seen anybody actually try to prove these claims by doing some simple acceleration testing.

It's funny how many people with an e-fan who fit a FMIC go back to the stock fan to cure their cooling woes...

They do it because the results look better. The same reason why stereo head units are rated at peak power instead of RMS power and why car manufacturer's quote power at the flywheel instead of at the wheels.

My biggest problem with all these e-fan discussions is the lack of understanding of how the stock fan works and all the so-called advantages that are based on that lack of understanding. Everyone talks about how the e-fan is drawing no power when the stock fan is partially engaged, but nobody ever seems to talk about when the e-fan is drawing full power (i.e. on) and moving far more air than is necessary when the stock fan only needs to be partially engaged. Only one side of the engineering is put forward because this makes the e-fan look so wonderful. And not a single person has ever quantified the supposed performance gains from swapping on an e-fan.

RotaMan99

Ya like I said, I havn't seen this issue with everones motor running a dual belt pulley, but I suppose if a few have the problem, then the problem could occur depending on what the actual cause would be.

My fan turns on at around 210*F. The stock clutch is full engaged at 85*C which If I remember is around 180*F? I believe that is AT the clutch and not the engine temp. So the engine temp would be higher. Don't exactly know how high though. So my temps may be climbing or may have just dropped. Either way, an e-fan taking up about 14 amps and 13v while the alt and fan motor both near 85% efficiency, that would equal out to about .28hp taken up by the e-fan. Think the stock fan will take less or the same when the rpms climb, causing the CFM of the stocker to increase, thus causing more hp loss? The clutch will disengauge more eventually, but not right away.

How can you say this? I would kind of agree if there was only a radiator and no a/c exchanger or fmic. Hopfully you have the belly pan in place. If not then 30-40 will not do much of anything, especially without a belly pan. I have to be going above 40 depending on the outside air temps to keep the engine cool without the fan with no belly pan.

Your missing the point. The e-fan, when on, would require less hp then a clutch fan no matter what temp the engine is at when at higher rpms which is where the stock clutch fan has a greater possibility of consuming more hp. Eventually the clutch would disengauge even more but not right away.

Highly, highly doubt the clutch fan would ever cool better then an e-fan below 2000rpm. Like I said, above 2500 the stock fan has the possibility of pulling A LOT More air then any e-fan. You missed the point I made.

Have you not read anything that I or steve has posted? I talk about the HP loss from a e-fan all the time in these threads because people think they take up no power so I insert the equation to straighten them out.

Why do you think Steve and I put together the E-fan articles on his site?

How so? Im not going to repost anything Steve or I have already said in the articles we made. Its time to start reading.

http://howto.globalvicinity.com

stevej88na

This isn't anyone against anyone else, it's people posting, discussing, and improving informative articles. I think we can make the articles more useful for the community here, and we've already caught a mistake in one of them. If there are misunderstandings, it's because the info is ambiguous. The articles up there aren't written in stone, and aren't the end-all-be-all, but we can continue to make them as useful as possible to both new and old members by incorporating concerns from these discussions and pursuing real-world measurements. That way, we really will end up with a set of articles we can point people towards to get as close to the whole picture as we can.

RotaMan, any updates on the airflow meter? That sounds like an interesting next step!

GloryDays

im not sure but im guessing that you were looking for a quick cheap way to put an e-fan on a car. I was once told that mustang fans work well. I put a efan from a supercharged t-bird, it had two speeds, the higher speed would drain the battery after repeatedly turning it on and off but, the lower speed worked perfectly. i had it rigged to turn on whenever the ignition was on, ran the negitive to the battery and the positive to a green relay box. The setup was god awful in quality i'll admit, but it was effective. After i switched i did notice that the engine responded better, just a little bit though. heres pics of the one I had.