A few months ago I found out about the taurus E fan mod. It got me curious...Has anyone on Blazerforums done it? Also have you noticed any gains in preformance or mpg?

 

I will be doing this mod when i finish my turbo. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

My cousin's '99 Bravada has an e-fan. I noticed no difference between his truck and mine performance wise with both of them being cold. If you are looking for space or just another mod to add to the list, go for it. In terms of power saving, well, if the thermo-clutch is engaged when you stomp on it, the ability to turn off the electric fans could be a benefit, but under normal conditions, its a wash.

The thermostatically controlled clutches on these fans is actually quite efficient. To prove a point a while ago, I had gone out when my truck was cold. With the engine idling, I stopped the fan with my bare hand and there was a small amount of resistance. Let it go and it does start spinning again, but not at the idle speed of the motor. How much is it drawing when its not on, very little.

 

Ok now this brings a hopefully good question, would running twin electric fans say two 12 inch just for example versus a clutch fan, would those two fans cool the motor more then the clutch fan thus with a cooler motor maintain better power?? Its been in my head to ask this for a while.

 

If you are not experiencing cooling problems, cooling wise there is no cooling advantage to an electric fan over a manual thermo clutch fan. As the coolant temperature is controlled by the thermostat, you don't cool better with one vs the other... Now if you run the electric fan more, then you could cool the coolant in the radiator more, but what does that accomplish? You may be able to cool it enough to do a WOT run without the fan on and have no problems.

There are other ways to spend $200 and gain more than the 5-10HP (being generous) that an e-fan may afford over a thermo-clutch fan. And that 5-10HP would be the difference between the thermo-clutch fan being engaged and the electric fan being off. During normal highway duty, its a wash. Stop and go in a hot climate, if you heat up, the electric fan would be able to be run on high to cool the motor. In which case, the thermo-clutch fan can only turn at the speed of the engine.

Again, if you want another mod on the list, need the room for something, or just like the clean look, go with the e-fan. It is a decent mod. Don't expect too much from it. I definitely think there are many other mods that I would do before the fan (PCM tune, exhaust, headers, etc...).

Another thing to note. What many people fail to do is tie in all of the relevant systems for proper operation. Most modern vehicles have the electric fan HIGH circuit tied in with the A/C compressor clutch cycle as well as temperature controlled. Since the stock fan only references heat through the radiator, you could get away with a simple thermo-couple control with an adjustable thermostat. But DO NOT forget this step unless you want to either constantly have your fan on lest you forget and overheat and/or manually turn it on LOW/HIGH as required for the conditions...

 

Thanks kyle for all that information, I appreciate it!! I am only going to go with an electric fan when I do a V8 swap to conserve on room!!

 

I believe that is one of the requirements of the v8 swap is an electric fan is it not...?

 

I have a taurus e-fan. Honestly it didn't make as big of a difference as I thought it would. A lot of people said they could really feel the difference in power and got another 3mpg. I got probably 1mpg and maybe a slight increase in acceleration. Here is some good info along with the wiring diagram I went off. http://www.s10forum.com/forum/f107/h...-review-59490/

 

Don't really like the way they wired that up. To get the full benefit of an efan setup, the High and Low should be independantly activated and neither should be on all of the time. With the wiring schematics shown for dual speed operation have the low speed fan on at all time and the high coming on when necessary activated by the thermostat as well as by the A/C.

To truely get all of the benefit, two adjustable thermostats should be used (which is kind of implied by the second diagram with the relays in series). You would definitely want to have two relays. Set the low speed up for say a radiator inlet temperature of say 100*F and the second for a an inlet temperature of around 150*F with the trigger from the second thermostat also tied in with the A/C compressor engagement (with diode). The numbers above are just guesses. Testing would need to be done for your specific situations to get to the appropriate activation temperatures.

 

I will be running a taurus fan in my v8 blazer. I plan to wire it up so that the low speed kicks on with my adjustable derale controller. I will have a manual switch inside the truck that can activate the high speed if needed. I will try it like that. If I find it doesn't work right, then I will look at doing it differently. Maybe wire it so that it kicks onto high instead of low. I don't really have many more options to add additional temp sensors.