I made a trip up to see my Dad last week, which is about an hour away. When I arrived, I noticed my electric fan was not making its usual noise, so I opened the hood and took a peek. It was turning, but nowhere near the speed it usually turns at.
Once I turned off the engine, I turned the fan blades by hand and it spun freely. There was the familiar smell of burned electrical components in the air, so I knew I had a burned out fan. This was not a cheap fan. Back in 1999, it cost $245 for the fan and integrated shroud.
After hearing good things about Flex-a-Lite, I decided to get their model 118. It was just slightly bigger than my radiator, but the brackets that held the old fan on worked with the new fan after a little bit of modification.
Once I wired it up, everything worked, so I took it for a test spin. I have an override switch so I can manually turn on the fan before the computer does, so I can keep the temps a little lower than what the EEC-IV was programmed for. That switch just activates the relay that the computer uses to turn on the fan. I just added a new ground path with a switch to the switch leg of the relay.
The biggest difference is the amount of air that flows through the fan without it being turned on. It seems I can now drive at 40mph without the engine getting above 185, whereas before, it would slowly creep up, even at highway speeds, unless the ambient air temp was under 80. What this means is that I'll need to run the fan less than before. I had been considering going to a Shelby front valance to allow more air to get to the radiator. Now that may be unnecessary. Cooling is a constant problem here in Florida, but it seems to not be for me anymore.
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