What to Consider When Choosing an Electric Radiator Cooling Fan
When choosing an electric fan, there’s a couple things you will want to consider. How big of a fan can you fit on your radiator? Then there is the question of placement, as well as what type of fan you choose.
When it comes to what size of fan to get, bigger is always better. Speedway Motors carries everything from a small 10” fan up to a 16” fan. First you will have to measure the core of your radiator to see just how big of a fan you can run. Usually the bigger the fan, the more air it will pull or push. As you can see the 12” fan pulls 1300 cfm, 15” fan pulls 1700 cfm and the fan with thermostat pulls 3000 cfm. Now you may have a T-bucket and can only fit a small fan, or you may have a larger car like a Chevelle and run a larger 15” fan.
Where can you place the fan? Can you run a fan between the motor and the radiator or between the radiator and the grill? If you can run a fan on the engine side, will you have interference with any pulleys? If you have interference, then you may have to run the fan on the grill side.
Not all fans are created equal. Some fans can be a push and pull style and some can’t. Item 910159 can be reversed by flipping the fan and switching how the wires are hooked up. You should know that a push style fan can block air flow as you go down the highway and they produce 75% of their published cfm. Fans also have 2 style of blades; straight and curved. Straight blade fans pull more air the curved, but curved are quieter. Fan noise may not even be an issue if you’re rocking loud exhaust and rocking out to AC/DC.
What can you afford? Fans can vary widely in price. Price may be higher on a fan that has built a built in thermostat. A fan with a built in shroud may also be more expensive. Just remember, you can’t enjoy your vehicle when you’re stuck on the side of the road waiting for your ride to cool down.
So now you’ve got your big air pulling fan. Do you have a shroud? A fan by itself will only cool the area it’s sitting on. You will want a fan shroud to take full advantage of that fan you purchased. The shroud will help spread the air coming through your radiator and in return keeping your water temps lower. Speedway Motors carries a shroud with honey comb like holes. These holes allow more air to travel through the radiator when going to down the highway.
Most of the electrical fans come with a 2 prong plug. To connect this to your current wiring, you may have to go to your local parts house or cut it off and use a weather pack connector.
