1. Anyone have any experience with electric fans?
2.1 to 10 How difficult for install?
3. Any noticable horsepower?
4. Any problems with heat levels under the hood?
5. Is it a total voltage hog?

 

Okay well even someone who is thinking of getting one? I really need some info! The guy at four wheel parts was telling me all this stuff about em' but I know its cuz hes trying to sell me something... Please?

 

Not sure on the difficulty of install, but you can do it fairly cheap by finding a ford taurus fan... I forget the year... but it's a 2 speed fan that moves air like a ****...

Needs some heavy duty relays though, draws a fair amount of power in high speed mode...

 

If you can find the electric fan featured on the new Tahoes and Suburbans...
You may have to do some cutting to install but it is 16% more efficient at moving air. You could also find two fans from a new Polaris Ranger, if you can find one thats wrecked! Personally I would get a more efficient fan blade to replace the OE blade if you are serious about it.

 

More efficient fan blade? go on...

 

Are you talking about the flexible fan blades?

 

Not flexible. A more efficient fan blade would be a fan with6 blades instead of 5 or 8 blades instead of 6 and so on. there are also more aerodynamicblades.There are alsofans with different angled blades. The electric fans also move more air at low RPMs than belt driven fans.

 

So basically an e-fan with lots of fins......

for the taurus fan would you need to modify any brackets or anything? Is it a direct fit? What are the pro's and cons of that over the OE fan?

 

The stock fan is quite efficient. Yes, it is driven by the engine, but it has a thermal clutch on it. Go out when your engine is completely cold and see how much resistance there is to turn the fan without the engine running. When cold, the fan is easy to spin with the engine off, and doesn't turn anywhere near as fast as the engine when the engine is running. When the temperatures rise, the fan will gradually engage to cool the radiator.

With an electric fan, you gain a bit of efficiency if it is thermostatically controlled. You lose a bit of efficiency from the fact that you are converting mechanical energy to electrical, and back again to mechanical (engine turns alternator, alternator powers the fan motor, fan motor turns the fan). If the fan is not thermostatically controlled (both high and low speeds), you really don't gain much of anything but space and a line item for your mod list. Ofcourse, if you wire it to a switch, you'll have the ability to completely turn it off manually which will free up some HP, but you won't want to do that for long stints...

My $0.02... Take from it what you will.

 

So basically another occasion where the engineers who designed the car actually knew what they where doing... crazy.