went ahead and ordered the fans, hope they work...
Printable View
went ahead and ordered the fans, hope they work...
So
Pros:
Water crossings
Slightly more power
Cons:
Might not cool my engine as well
Might not be reliable.
Good call. ;)
I really don't see why you're trying to reinvent the wheel. The additional parasitic drain from the alternator will negate any power gain from getting rid of the mechanical fan.
1. The mech fan was designed to work for your motor. The only time it has let you down is because it got tangled in a wire.
2. The money you'll end up spending because of relays and thermostatic controllers for your fan will make the fans just as expensive.
3. How often do you make water crossings deep enough to hit the fan?
4. Will the electric fans cover the whole radiator or are you going to have to make a massive shroud that will take up as much space as the mech fan?
I'm not trying to be a dick, but stop trying to reinvent the wheel. What's wrong with the mech fan? Maybe there's a reason you can't find anyone who has put electric fans on that truck?
So, anyone oil sampled to see how the aftermarket filters vs stock?
Since you're not trying to be a dick I'll try to explain it so even you can understand, :flipoff2:!
The additional drag from the alternator will be less then the horsepower lost from the fan, it's an efficiency thing. However, the power gains will be minimal at best, largely do to the stock fan hardly being utilized. I have never said I'm doing this for power or fuel economy.
1. The mechanical fan has not preformed up to my expectations. I've had to stop and let the truck cool numerous times, hopefully the E-fans will speed up cool downs and prevent low-speed, low RPM over heating.
2. The money I'll drop in the fans will be twice what I could fix the truck for, but most parts I add to the truck are not cheap.
3. I really can't believe you would ask this question. How often do you wheel? Why do you need a diesel? all bogus questions. This isn't the first time I've trashed a filter in water and obviously I'm trying to improve the truck's water crossing abilities.
4. From what I can tell, I like the design of the flex-a-lite shroud better than the stock one.
From what I've found on the interwebs is just people that have no experience with the e-fans saying they are junk and everybody with them say the work great. Obviously they are not a popular mod because most people want more power and there are a plethora of better power-adding options.
Tommy, do you not have an electric fan on your bronco? You sound like JB arguing about diesels.
You mean he was making several valid points?
You saying your motor not cooling when towing or when in sand? My little gay gasser would get to 200-210 towing in July heat, but never in sand. Trans tempt would get high in sand though.
Cool story I know
I think you should try it, but I think it is alot of work for not much gain
Low speed- Low RPM you just need to down shift and raise the RPM's it will solve your cooling issues and lower EGTs
Are electric fans really any better for water crossing? I've never had problems with a mechanical fan while crossing water, and I'm pretty sure I've swamped my **** more than anyone else on this forum. The metal fan on the CJ only hit the radiator when the motor mounts broke, never under water.
electric fans don't last near as long as a fan clutch. I've replaced the rover condensor fans multiple times, even with flex a lites once. flex a lites didn't last more than a few years. OEM stuff lasted at least a decade, but still crapped out.
The mechanical fan on my cj bent when i went through deep water and went into the radiator. Congrats on your expert level number of water crossings bra!!!!! Great accomplishment!
I looked into electric fans for my 6.4 for awhile and kept getting turned away. The mechanical fan is always working, always pushing a constant stream of air across all coolers. The E- fan, will kick on and off at a certain temp but often with a truck that is towing, it hits these temps while pulling a steep grade, once the fan kicks on the temps are continuing to skyrocket and the fan can not keep up. Meanwhile the stock fan would have been working to lower these temps from the start, getting a "head start" on cooling compared to an electric setup.
Hope that made some sense.
Thanks Even, I guess I'll just try them out any how though.
Generally speaking dropping a gear does cool the truck well, but having to shutdown to go to low range sucks.
FWIW - I don't believe the parasitic drag from powering E-fans is anywhere near the drag from a mech fan.
Actually I did and they blew. I had a dual fan set up and they never kept it cool and they drew a ton of power.........Stock cooling set ups work. Especially for mostly stock trucks, like Travis'
1. If you need more cooling add a pusher to supplement your stock system. Or do some gears......maybe then you won't be working the engine so hard to tow. You have 37's and stock gears.
2. All of the other expensive stuff you put on your truck made sense, and was proven
3. It's a valid question, it's a dd. The amount of negative it will probably do on your daily driving plus the money you're gonna spend on it will not be offset by the 5 times you ever get in water that deep. We aren't talking about air filters, we're talking about the fan. For the record I think switching it with the battery is a solid idea.
Do whatever you want, it's your truck. Just don't throw your old parts away.
(you asked for opinions, it's a forum....that's my opinion)
I guess you arent having much fun in Germany? :flipoff2:
Yeah my efans work great on my Jeep. So good actually that GM decided to put electric fans on newer GM vehicles from the factory.
Let us know how they work because like you probably found there are many people that talk about how they don't work but I haven't found many that have actually run them.
Will do, and it's not like I'm stuck with them if they don't work that well
1. You have an e fan now
2. You only had like 60 amps worth of alternator when you had the fans (that's like complaining that your brand new 42" tsl s and awesome beadlocks suck because you keep breaking Dana 30 axle shafts)
3. Travis's truck isn't very stock and definitely isn't used like a stock truck. His stock fan was plastic and it broke when it hit the water.
I'm not necessarily agreeing with Travis's choice but when you break something do you not look for better options before just replacing it with more of the same part that broke?
The flex-a-fit dual fans work great now on the beast, just had to wire them up right and replace some wire that had been butt spliced way too many times.
Fans came in and I'm thinking they will work. I haven't tried to fit anything yet, and won't until next week, but I'm very impressed with the quality.
Few things I noticed:
-Full aluminum shroud with a gasket seal
-Multi-speed controller, so the fans hopefully wont be playing "catch-up" like Evan said.
-very solid mounting hardware.
Also these do not come with the warning not to tow over 18,000 lbs like the first generation did. Also when going back an looking at the cheaper model, it lacks the multi-speed control, aluminum shroud, and is only rated for 3500 cfm. I'm figuring any negative you saw on the interwebs probably came from the other model.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...ps140326ac.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...pse7aef435.jpg
Not sure what this is though...
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...pscccf9c1b.jpg
So I went ahead and replaced my Q-Industries, portable, chinese, air compressor that I lost. Even though I like buying expensive ****, I still can't pull the trigger on a $400 + viair kit, so I present:
Power Spair by Slime
At a comparable price ($49.99) this thing blows (:p) the other compressor out of the water!
Features Include:
-24 oz slime
-Same ****ty compressor, but with built in LED light!
-Cigarette and alligator hook ups
-Stickers
-Tire gauge
-How-To manual
-Misc box-o-****
-Plugs
-Sturdy case with safety reflective triangle
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...psca5f6bba.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...ps5c5a82c2.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...ps924a965d.jpg
I need to get me one of them power spairs
Fan looks better than what I was thinking it would
I need to get me one of them power spairs
Fan looks better than what I was thinking it would
judging by the location those are most likely vents to let air out from inside the shroud when traveling at highway speeds if the fans are not running.
Well the truck kept getting warm when city driving so I spent two days installing the fans at my parents house ( between missing parts and torrential rains). So far I'm happy, major disappointment was the kit missing then temp sensor but one is in the mail from flex-a-lite.
With out the temp sensor I wired two switches that will override the variable control module, one for off and one for on ( I was planning on doing this anyhow).
As far as the design and kit goes I am somewhat impressed, two major gripes are:
1. The shroud leaves a little to be desired as far as coverage goes. The offset shape fits well at the bottom where there is tight clearance between the radiator and power steering box, however the top leaves a portion ( top corner) of the radiator uncovered for no reason that I can see.
2. Missing the temp sensor, this is a pretty important part because the fans won't work as designed without.
As for performance and cooling I am impressed but have yet to put it through any serious test. So far I've driven though Houston traffic, open highway, extended idling and about a 10 mile beach drive. I'll use the 200 degree mark as a benchmark, previously the truck would run about 190-195 and reach 200 in slightly above normal conditions but would not stay there. Only steep hills towing or extended distances in deep sand does the temp gauge hang around 210. Only twice has the truck really got hot, once was dragging the krawltex buggy up a mountain ( switched to low range ) and once dragging a couple thousand pounds of fishing gear down PINS ( torque converter permanently locked, dash board looked like Christmas lights and just had to cross my fingers).
Houston traffic- this was a mix of freeways and suburbia and the truck never exceeded 200, ac worked great. Most of the time the truck was running slightly cooler maybe 185 and might have even been a tad more powerful because of this.
Idling - stayed cooler than normal and the ac has been working great, where previously it sucked.
Beach trip - the conditions down Matty were pretty ideal but I did make it a point to creep though all the deep stuff and never saw 200. Ac kicked ass the whole time.
In conclusion it's still to earl to tell but it's looking good for e-fans.
Disclaimer: the fans were wired 100% on or off, so no variable control. The wiring is unfinished because removing the batteries made me want to go ahead with the relocation.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...ps7da93861.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...ps946618c5.jpg
That was my first ipad post...
sounds good, I would recommend wiring the fan to the AC clutch if possible so that the fans run whenever the AC compressor kick on. That way you will continue to get kick ass AC all of the time.
Sounds promising. What was the outside temp? Did you notice a drop in voltage (dash gauge) with the fans on vs off?
It will get wired to the ac one I get the temp probe. No drop in voltage or dime head lights and temp has been up to 95 ish
Also I'm switching to a ipad with motionx hd GPS ( only $2.99 )for navigation and chart plotting. I like this route a lot but my only concern is storing the maps for off line use. Just the topo and street maps of Texas looks like it will be 20-30 gigs and I haven't figured out how to store the sat imagery yet. I'm using AT&T for the carrier and have been pleased with the south Texas coverage. Using the tablet to locate points of interest on the map I can transfer coordinates ( manualy, by hand )to my handheld unit and use it when I'm on the bike or kayak, but I'm still looking for a way I can transfer large amounts of data through a sd card. Does anybody have any experience with this?
On a side note the 450x runs out of gas around the 40 mile mark off road... How the hell am I suppose to run the baja like that?:p
Don't use the topo/aerial tiffs for the entire state. Instead split them into USGS quad grids and open the grid that you are in. File size should be much more managable that way. Do you have to manually change coordinate systems on an i-pad? I know nothing about them or how accurate they are. I have two mapping grade Trimble units that I use daily. A Juno unit (2-3m accuracy post processing) and a XH6000 unit (submeter accuracy post processing)
back country navigator lets you select the areas you want for offline routes instead of the whole state.
as far as file transfer, what is wrong with using wifi from the PC instead of SD card? (I'm expecing a typical Travis answer, don't let me down on this one)
A several hundred mile trail files isn't that big, any program worth $2.99 should handle GPX or KML, thats pretty much the standard. SD card should hold all of your travels unless you've got it sampling every meter.
I don't think the file size is a problem, I just loaded the whole state so I don't have to worry about it. Not sure what you mean by manually changing coordinate systems. Accuracy is not that great, but think I have a few option to help improve that.
Looking for a way to transfer in the field between the ipad and handheld, ie some type of sd card reader. I tried back country a couple years back, maybe ill revisit it now, but I didn't like it then. Motionx let's you select the area you want to store.
if your hand held supports NEMA 0183 out you SHOULD be able to bluetooth it and dump trails to the chart plotting software on the fly, but that also depends on the author of the chart plotting software enabling more than just the position and heading portions of the standard. The cheaper the chart plotter the less likely they are to follow and enable all of the standards.
I think OrucMaps and iRegatta support it, but I don't know if those are available for ios and haven't tried it first hand.
It may also require a lot of serial to bluetooth adapters depending on the handheld gps.
I use this http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs...FYFhMgodHV8ADw
with some custom junk to make it bluetooth.
I use a delorme pn40 for the bike. I'm not quite following, but are you suggesting using a Bluetooth adapter for the delorme that could send information to my ipad? If so what kind of adapter would be compatable?
My simple plan: Use a bad elf chipset to improve GPS accuracy, should get to the 2-3 meter mark. Then for file transfers use my old android phone to email ( hot spot enabled ) the gpx file. I would like to find a card reader that would just upload the gpx file to the ipad ( I'm sure someone makes this ). My major concern is if the bad elf chipset plugged directly into the ipad will work, or if I need to mount something on top of the cab.
thats exactly what I'm saying, but it looks like the pn-40 can't do that. The pn-20 should.
similar to what I'm doing. I say scrap the bad elf plan and get a marine multi channel gps like the 16hvs or any of the dirt cheap lowrances that are on ebay and plug the serial port in to a blue tooth adapter like this one http://www.nordfield.com/wireless-se...etooth-adapter . Anything with NMEA 0183 output @ 4800 bps will work. You may have to go to a good electronics place like Altex to get the stuff to convert the gps plug to 9 pinQuote:
My simple plan: Use a bad elf chipset to improve GPS accuracy, should get to the 2-3 meter mark. Then for file transfers use my old android phone to email ( hot spot enabled ) the gpx file. I would like to find a card reader that would just upload the gpx file to the ipad ( I'm sure someone makes this ). My major concern is if the bad elf chipset plugged directly into the ipad will work, or if I need to mount something on top of the cab.
Scrap the bad elf idea because it's not a good multi channel GPS receiver, or other reasons? Personally I would rather sacrifice a small amount of accuracy for simplicity.