Got my Electric Fans installed

[biosehnsucht]

with some help from a friend (most notable he provided the drill), got me e-fans mounted. there's a problem with the SMIC piping now not fitting but that should be corrected tomarrow (today) .. I can only close the hood because I force it to close ATM.. the piping wants to go through the top driver's side of the fan shroud.

the fans are brute force, dual 11" SPAL fans, moving a rated 2780 CFM of air.however they're not very loud. there's a distinct but faint "whrrrr" sound and the sound of moving air, thats it. There's are better than most OEM fans.. tho they're listed in the "OEM" rather than "Aftermarket" section of SPAL's website

the mounts, and fans and shroud themselvse, are strong enough I can shake the car by grabbing onto the motor baskets and shaking it.

the mounting is pretty simple.. a peice of 1/8" x 1 1/2" x ~24" flat aluminum and another same dimensions more or less, but L shaped.

flat on top, L on the bottom.

on the top drilled holes to mount to the efans, and to the radiator, same on the bottom, although while the radiator has tapped M6x1.0 holes to bolt to at top at the bottom it has a pair of horizontal bracket things that have a ~1/2" hole in them.

I spent under $30 for all the parts to do the actual mounting and have tons of alum left over (since they were in 6ft lengths)

this almost didn't fit.. so you'll notice in the pics that its tilted slightly.. at the passenger side, avoiding the rad hoses, and at the driver's side, avoiding the frame rail.. it is slammed right up against the frame rail there, and just barely is high enough on the passenger side to clear the rad hose there.. and the tilt induced by the frame rail allows it to clear the top rad hose.

on the bottom to fit those rather large mounting holes I found at a hardware store (Elliot's, they got tons of stuff! only local in Dallas area tho, not a large chain) some rubber thingies with threads in them, the sort that when tightened cause the rubber to expand and lock in place; don't care about the locking but they're the right size to make dual function standoffs (as they have a lip) and vibration insulators. so put a bolt down from the L bracket to those, with a spacer made from spare front a STB nut, and that takes care of the bottom mounting. also the lack of space necessitated cutting out notches in the efans shroud to allow the bolt to fit since the head would otherwise run into the shroud.

at the top, we had to put the whole thing in when the rest of it was done and mark where the top bracket we were fabbing up met up with the radiator's mounting locations.. then take it back out and apart so we could drill them.

we still haven't blocked off the driver's side where the shroud sticks out past the radiator but it scarcely matters right now, I'll take care of that when I have to take it all off again to replace the AC condenser. we blocked along the top and bottom edges w/ foam (also, as with the rest of the nuts, bolts, alum, etc, from Elliot's), some sort of self adhesing stuff for marine/automotive use (or so the packaging said). the passenger side the radiator sticks out further than the shroud anyways so nothing to block (it should be noted that the shroud vertically has sides but along the top and bottom its cut away, presumably so you can use that space to mount w/ brackets or such)

right now I've sort of hack wired them up via the stock water temp switch in the lower rad hose and the existing relays I had setup the AC condenser fan to operate before it died, but later I'll rewire them properly; I'm going to have one fan operate with a lower temperature thermoswitch (probably from a FWD CA, which activates at 180-something or such vs 198F), the other side via a pressure switch on the AC system (replacing the stock cutoff switch with a cutoff/fan activation switch so that instead of trying to guess when the condenser needs help from the increased water temp, it'll base it off the actual pressure inside the system), and then have them both kick on when the normal 198F thermoswitch activates and/or I manually toggle a switch (might never get around to the switch)

the fan control will be simple using merely 4 rectifying diodes oriented such that a ground at either side only activates that side but one in the middle will activate both relays simultaneously

anyhow, the pics:

top mounting bracket, driver's side:

same, passenger's side:

bottom mounting bracket:

again, but closeup of one side where we had to cut it out a bit to fit around the lower radiator hose:

and installed:
Modified by biosehnsucht at 2:30 AM 3/21/2009

[float_6969]

I'm running a single electric fan that I found on a Dodge Caravan. Does that mean I'm more cool, or less cool than you? Heheheh

[rico05]

I run Altima fans, and they work great, but because we had to build the circuit to run it, my relays and wiring is all run under the cold pipe, so it looks nowhere as clean as those fans. Looks good man!

[slownslurious]

I run twin 12's just like that, with L brackets to mount them.. only I used much lighter weight stuff and mounted it directly against the radiator.

[float_6969]

I run Altima fans, and they work great, but because we had to build the circuit to run it, my relays and wiring is all run under the cold pipe, so it looks nowhere as clean as those fans. Looks good man!

Why didn't you use the OEM relays and wires?

[biosehnsucht]

I got my piping issue fixed, and in the one day I've driven it before fixing it it scraped off alot of the top of the fan shroud so its ugly now

it almost wore through the top to the point where the little flaps on the top have their tops exposed.. those flaps are there to open up from pressure from the front to allow flow at speed when fans aren't pulling and to make the air pull through the fans (suck close) when they are running..

I can always replace later pretty easy tho..

[JDMSIL80]

Sorry but whats the benefit in running an electrical fan vs the stock fan?

[nnkfws333]

This item has been discussed a lot on NICO in general. You can probably find better answers or more detailed but depending on the fan, it can pull more air then a stock clutch fan. Also it can reduce the load on the engine but that is debatable.

Also with old engine swaps + older cars the stock fan blade is normally broken and its normally safer to run a electric fan then a blade that can come off and cut wires, radiators, etc.

I personally like them because you can work on the engine a lot easier then have a huge fan blade + shroud you have to always take off.

[rico05]

Why didn't you use the OEM relays and wires?

What factory relays?

[rico05]

Sorry but whats the benefit in running an electrical fan vs the stock fan?

Well, the stock clutch fan flows well enough, but most aftermarket fans flow better. Also, the reducred rotational load on the crank helps it revv a little better, so an extra 1-3hp may be seen. But I did it for the increase in space!!

[biosehnsucht]

a stock fan that is bent and/or unbalanced is a bad idea. of which I have two!

[lifelicksballs]

from which car would work the best for electric fans inside an s13

[float_6969]

What factory relays?

The stock electric fan for the A/C is run off of the A/C relay in a SOHC, and has a totally separate relay in the DOHC S13's. If you originally had a DOHC KA, then you could use all of the stock wiring and relay and just use the plug in. On the SOHC it only runs when the A/C runs, but since I didn't have A/C, I just removed the wire from the relay that would have fed the A/C and used the existing plug for the stock electric fan and used that for mine. It works very well and it very clean. I just had to find which wire to use in the stock harness.

[biosehnsucht]

I used to have the AC fan set up to run off a pair of relays such that it only ran when the car was 'on' but never acc or start.. but the fan died

[nnkfws333]

from which car would work the best for electric fans inside an s13

Altima Fans work the best and they are cheap as hell too! Require some cutting but search around NICO and you will find tons of posts.

I know on Freshalloy they did a test on which fans did the best on what radiator and I know that the Altima Fans won hands down.

[biosehnsucht]

IIRC I remember that U12 stanzas (precursers to altimas) had slightly narrower fan shrouds/fans so they may fit easier w/ less haxing than the altima ones..

[rico05]

I am running 1994 Altima fans myself. A bit of cutting to the shround at the upper rad hose and at the lower right (side under the air filter) and it was golden. Like I said earlier, I made my own circuit, but I am going to dig around and see what I can find left of my A/C wiring. IIRC, we cut it all out when we did my swap because I knew that I would never have A/C in this car again....

[rico05]

Altima Fans work the best and they are cheap as hell too!

I got mine for $35 shipped!!