L motor thermo fans

Paint, body preparation and modification, interior work and electrical
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Nustad 510
Posts: 41
Joined: 27 May 2010 04:40
Location: Newbury, Australia

L motor thermo fans

Post by Nustad 510 »

Hi all,

saw an old post from Byron about fitting twin 10" electric fans to his bronze car. Im doing the same on my new project. Does anyone know if he drilled new mounting holes in the radiator support panel or utilised factory holes. I know this question is a long shot, take care.

cheers, Shaun.
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abisel
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Joined: 29 May 2014 14:30
Location: St. Charles, Missouri

Re: L motor thermo fans

Post by abisel »

See my posting in What Did You Do On Your 510 Today, page 95. I mounted twin 9" Spal fans to expanded metal and not the radiator. I didn't like the idea of the push-through plastic zip ties that would mount the fans directly to the radiator. So I mounted the fans to expanded metal to the front of the radiator support and used the radiator stock mounting points to secure the expanded metal and the radiator.
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Byron510
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Joined: 01 Jul 2003 23:06
Location: Maple Ridge, BC

Re: L motor thermo fans

Post by Byron510 »

Nustad 510 wrote:Hi all,

saw an old post from Byron about fitting twin 10" electric fans to his bronze car. Im doing the same on my new project. Does anyone know if he drilled new mounting holes in the radiator support panel or utilised factory holes. I know this question is a long shot, take care.

cheers, Shaun.
Not a long shot at all Shaun - it gave me an excuse to go dig through the archived photo files on some forgotten hard drive device :-)

Attached below shows how I did in fact drill new holes in the rad support to mount the Spal fans I used. It was a long time ago, but I also think these fans also had a factory mount to secure them to each other where the two fans touched in the center - which was pretty cool (no pun intended).

The photos also show how much of the fan blows directly at the rad support itself - effectively blocking the air flow. But with the stock style 3 core rad on the car at the time I installed thee fans, there was no sense in trimming the sheet metal as there was no rad behind it anyways.

The fans put out huge volumes of air - two thing happen when the fans kick in;

First, these two fans together draw huge current. So when they kick in the damn car near stalls because of the sudden electrical load on the alternator! The stand alone EFI does not have a way to compensate for this load like OEM cars do.

Secondly, the amount of air the se fans push push is big. If I'm standing behind the car, and the fans kick in, I can clearly feel the sudden air flow and heat past my legs when standing at the rear bumper with shorts on.

Oddly, the fans didn't fix my cooling issue at this time and I still struggled to keep the car cool on hot days and hard driving episodes. A couple years later I built an aluminum rad which is featured later in my build thread which incorporates a 13 plate heat exchanger for the oil. It helps the car warm up faster when starting the car cold and keeps the oil temp exactly at the coolant temp under all conditions including track days. But now I have a cooling system that is so efficient that I literally can't get the oil up to temp on cooler days. This latter problem is certainly better to deal with that the original marginal overheating issue. I have considered dropping the weight of oil I use as a result of being able to keep the oil temp so regulated. I have also considered an oil temp thermostat but was trying to avoid more plumbing, and to keep things as simple as possible under the already complicated systems under the hood.

Hope these photos help. Best regards.
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Nustad 510
Posts: 41
Joined: 27 May 2010 04:40
Location: Newbury, Australia

Re: L motor thermo fans

Post by Nustad 510 »

Thanks to you both for the helpful photos and explanations. I was thinking along the same lines. Will do a mock-up on my spare car before doing the real deal. Cheers, Shaun.
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