neuro

I have a cooling fan timer under the left kick panel. One wire goes to ground and the other wire is not hooked up. Any ideas on where to attach this?

adam c

iTrader: (2)

Cooling Fan Modification

t-von

iTrader: (8)

I really don't understand the usefulness of this modification. Could someone please explain to me the advantages of doing such mod? I can't think of any. Staying off boost and cruising lightly before shutdown is the absolute best to drop the engine bay temps and to keep from cooking everything in the engine bay when it's off.

FD3S2005

iTrader: (11)

i just open my hood for 30 mins when i go home.

Sgtblue

iTrader: (16)

Agree. And I did it back in the day despite never seeing any data to support it's usefulness. Ten minutes of pumping a little ambient air under the hood didn't do anything that five more minutes of heat soaked engine and turbos didn't counteract. In retrospect it was just a "feel good" thing. At least it was free and easily reversible.

adam c

iTrader: (2)

I'll drive my car to the golf course once a week. Its about 7 miles. I'll warm it up for two minutes while I load the clubs, then take a back road, and get on it a bit. I wont have 10 minutes to let it cool down because its a short trip. I flip on the fans so that they stay on once I get there. Once there I pop the hood, unload my clubs, and change shoes. While doing this, the fans are cooling the radiator, and the coolant in it. I start the car,and the pfc is reading well over 100c. The "cool" coolant in the radiator circulates, and the pfc reading drops to around 83c. I shut it down much cooler than it would have been had I not done this procedure. I do this because I dont want to cook everything under the hood any more than is necessary. When I go home, I can simply open the hood and leave it in the garage.

At an autocross I like to open the hood in between runs, and run the fans to cool the engine.

Maybe it does just make me feel good, but I really do feel good about it

t-von

iTrader: (8)

Its amazing how some of you guys cars run hotter than others. Im in west texas and 100degree days are very common. Back when I 1st got my fd, I took it to the 1/4 mile track to do some runs. After my 1st run, I parked the car and opened the hood while idling (like most do here) and waited for the engine to cool down. I was wanting to kill some of the heat soak so I could do another run as the staging line was very short. This took forever. So I said to hell with this. I jumped back in the car and drove it gingerly up the road a mile and back (3 min round trip). Got back and opened the hood and the engine bay temp difference was substantially cooler than earlier. This convinced me to never let my car idle to cool down because the fans will never move as much air in and around the engine bay as the ambient air that enters the engine while the vehicle is in motion. Plus you cool down the engine oil. The proff is when my orginal engine blew at 108k, my wiring harness was still soft in a lot of places and the buyer of my harness was amazed at its condition.


Another example! Last year I had the very fortunate pleasure of going to the fd testing event at VIR and got to ride in Fritz's track car. The south course is somewhere around 2 miles long I think. Lap after lap, Fritz beat the hell out of his fd driving it to the limit to give numerous riders a taste of what the fd could do. I remember watching his temp gauge the whole time . After beating on his car, all he ever did was take 1 cool down lap. The temp gauge started dropping like a rock on the no boost cool down lap. He would pull up to the start and simply just shut her off. He didn't idle it longer nor did he even open the hood (which was vented of course). He simply shut it off like you would expect to do to a normal car.

adam c

iTrader: (2)

At an autocross you dont have the option to do a continue driving to cool down. You have to get right back in line for your next run. Idling with the hood open (preferably with fans running) is the only option to cool it down.

Fritz has some pretty significant cooling mods, and that vented hood. Its not a car you can compare to a stock FD.

When you shut down a "normal" FD, the engine bay temps go way up. Doing whatever you can to get that heat out of there will certainly extend the life of everything under the hood.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

For a car thats autocrossed, I see your point but not for an everyday street car (which most of us here have) that has the time to be driven gingerly before shut down. A normal street rotary also doesn't have a fan on the oil cooler so how can an oil cooler do its job with the engine running stationary? It cant so the oil is just gonna get hotter! Adam you did help me see some different examples so I appreciate the info however, I dont think I'll ever make use of that mod.

Sgtblue

iTrader: (16)

When I did the fan mod it was with the intent to reduce baking of the plastics, solenoids and vacuum hoses. Not with the intent of reducing engine coolant/block temps. I guess if you're willing to restart the car briefly you could rightfully argue that would be accomplished to some extent indirectly. But as t-von alluded to, that's not practical for most of us. And I don't see there being much meaningful difference in baking time if you did it (the restart routine) without the fan mod.

Tem120

iTrader: (5)

the theory is , when you shut the car off for short periods of time say a quick gas station stop , or a short stop the fans will stay on for a while to cool the water in the radiator , and when you start the car again the now cool water in the radiator brings temps down


I auto-x my car and I have tried it every wich way in order to keep from heat soaking , shutting off when in grid , opening the hood , leaving the car on , and shutting the car off and then turning the ignition on in order to get the fans to spin with the motor off .

and last option key in ignition on , but motor turned off yields the best results for cooling while staging . second is leaving the car on , fans maintain temps but the engine still heat soaks . so whats the point in wasting gas .

I have a optima yellow so it has good reserve and I leave the fans running for a few minutes and when I start the car again temps go down quite a bit .

I am in miami . we got nice hot humid weather , Plus I have a front mount which lets face it sucks for cooling ( I need to get rid of it )

t-von

iTrader: (8)

Think about what you just wrote. The primary intent should be to reduce the engine block, coolant, and turbo manifold temps as they are the primary heat source.

Sgtblue

iTrader: (16)

No data...but I'd don't see it doing much if anything to reduce radiant heat from the tubos. And guessing they are the primary sources for the baking. So shouldn't the primary intent be to reduce that? We wouldn't be having this discussion if we were NA so its not block cooling thats the issue.
I just don't see it reducing baking time much. But hey...Adam has given me some food for thought.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

See thats the thing, every turbo car is NA while in vacuum as the turbos are doing nothing but rotating with exhaust flow. I think my fd was sitting somewhere around 8-9" of vacuum while cruising on the freeway. Under these conditions, the turboes aren't doing anything to cause the engine to make extra heat. There not forcing any air down the engines throat so you get much lower combustion pressures and temps. When those things stay low, the engines runs much cooler. The coolant temps will be lower as well as the the manifold temps. So if one takes it easy on the throttle a mile of so before shutdown, the engine and all the other components will be much cooler at shutdown. Now if you autocross the vehicle, I can see the need for such a mod as you dont have that time to cool it down like you would on the street or race track.

Tem120

iTrader: (5)

it just helps with water cooling . After a hot lap , you go from 14 PSi of boost to idle. engine temps seem to dislike this , It happened with my stock setup and it happens with my FMIC setup . engine is fine in temps right after the run but after then slowing down and idling in grid for 10 minutes temps seem to go up .

Now as for daily use . I don't see it being nearly as needed . I dont really have issues even in the miami heat . and heat soak in traffic

FD3S2005

iTrader: (11)

When I had my car in the garage I used to do this too with a fan in front of the car.