With a 16" electric fan i have a 1/4" abouve the water pump pully and a 1/4 betweem the bolts. This is with no shroud just the fan against the radiator. Should i buy a 14" fan to get more clearance if it will give me any. I cant use a mechanical fan it sits to low in comparison with the radiator. Im trying to avoid buying a sidewinder fan which are close to $500 and or the zip's water lump that raises the mech fan 5" higher
Can you just get a narrower fan? I know Spal makes many that are 2.1" thick. I've heard the Zips water pump has had problems with overheating.
Nothing is more frustrating than a car you can't cool,,spend the money on a electric fan that will work or use a zips riser..I've used two zips risers and they work great. HRP
If i raised the motor it would have to be about 5 inches or more there for most likely id have to trim the fire wall for the trans and my car is already painted
I*'m with Danny(HRP), go with a Zip's especially if this is an early model car without hood or hood sides. Nothing fucks up the looks of an early car underhood worse than an electric fan, and not all of them will do the job anyway. Best HAMBer info on them came from Deuce Roadster when I was contemplating this. Randy has unfortunatly passed away, but his posts live on here on HAMB. Do a search. Some things, you just gotta bite the bullet and spend the extra cash to do it right.
Painted and now you want to figure out a work around for the fan ? That's going to cost you something, $ and or extra work So you have 2.75 inches between the radiator and the water pump ? Zips was made for your exact situation of height variance but I'm not sure if it will fit in that 2.75" space anyway.
I thought i had it figured out until a friend came by and said my set up wasnt gonna cool efficiently.
You got that right... This shows just how much higher it raises the water pump and centers the fan onthe radiator. HRP
If you mount the engine with the water pump in the middle of the radiator, you can run at least a 17" original style fan.. That is assuming your talking about a model A.. If not an "A", forget what I just said...
So what did the old school guys do back in the 50's before electric fans? Did they raise the motor or was water pump risers common back then?
Ford has a better idea http://www.fordmuscleforums.com/cooling-articles/482048-junkyard-upgrade-dual-electric-fans.html Notice the pictures of the install? the fan hub centers between the two fans providing more clearance. Just to rile up my buddy HRP refer to rule#3 http://www.griffinrad.com/tips.cfm
That dual fan setup in the link posted by JeffB2 would work very well on lots of OT late model cars with a wide radiator, but wouldn't work on the '29"A" listed in the OP's profile and depicted in his avatar, and which I'm assuming is the car in question in this thread.. Early cars with open hood sides or no hood look like Fido's Ass with electric fan IMO. As to "What did the "old school guys do?" Most ran flatheads, many of which were equipped with a high mounted fan that could also be mounted on later flatheads which were OEM with a lower fan mounting. When OHV engines came on the scene, the cars got by (barely), because these engines were far better on heat efficiency than the flatheads they replaced, and the big capacity radiators were still there from the flathead that was replaced. Raising the engine 5" would be ridiculous to the extreme, IMO.
The norm for old school Model A hot rodders wasn't the common practice of today's rodders of z'ing the frames. I've had several Model A's back in the day that that since they were not channel or chopped the engine sit where the fan was close to the center of the radiator. I love you Jeff,as much as we agree on most things,especially the '54 Ford ,our light hearted rivalry about fans & radiators will continue to be the burr under each others saddle. HRP
Just want to relate a story about how well a properly set up Zip's cools: My '31 "A" Hiboy was well enough completed to take to 'Steel in Motion" @ the Union, SC dragstrip in late May of this year. There were thousands of people, hundreds of cars, and dozens of vendors there, a great meet for certain. But all those vendors, many of the cars, and most of the people were lined up on both sides of the return road for the strip, with no pylons or lines restricting pedestrian usage, just a general milling around crowd of folks, looking, buying, and wandering around. Consequently, when you made a pass on the strip and wanted to return to staging lanes for another run, you had to traverse a return road jammed with people not at all interested in yielding the road to you and your hot rod. Result was a long stretch of idling in 1st gear, often depressing clutch to go even slower or stop, before you got back around to the staging lanes. So what you had was a perfect recipe for overheating: a full throttle high rpm run down the strip and a super slow trip back up the return road, often stopping and idling. I had installed a 12oz water bottle with a zip cord as a puke can and inserted the rad. overflow hose in the neck Started the day with coolant full to within an inch of top of rad. and only had about a tablespoon of overflow in the water bottle at the end of the day. The SW temp gauge never reached 200*. I don't think you'll go wrong with a Zip's if you follow ALL the instructions that they send PLUS do a seach for threads here on HAMB, especially for posts by Deuce Roadster. Randy is now looking down on us from above, having passed away, but his posts live on. I'm adding a PS, that day at SIM involved at least 6 runs down the strip, back to bacxk.
Fans electric vs mechanical I've yet to see a mechanical fan cause an overheat. But I can't say the same for an electrical.
It doesn't matter if the frame is kicked up, swooped up or straight, if the motor is installed at the right height a mechanical will fit and cool any engine.. We don't need no stinkin' electric or Zip's.....
If I jacked up my engine 5" above where it belongs, which is as low as you can get it with decent pan and flywheel clearance, then I too would want a full hood on my hot rod similar to the one in your avatar.
Obviously since Dave and I don't have the skills to set a engine up right so we don't need to use a zips risers... would you care to elaborate on how to do it correctly,a few photos of how you did it would be helpful. HRP
Here's the motor in my coupe with a 17" stock fan... And here is the motor in a sedan I just sold... Sorry for the extra pics...
If you ^^^ notice in the second pic the engine is not to high, just high enough to run a PROPER mechanical fan...
Y'all just add me to the list too. I fought hard to get the engine under the hood, a very small trans tunnel and a mechanical fan in a channeled body with shortened grill - did you know zips has a BBC riser too oh and that bolts onto a hemi.
A 28/29 radiator is considerably shorter than a 32,if I mounted my engine like that without a riser I would probably have to resort to using a electric fan myself. HRP
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