About a week ago, my adventure began… I decided to remove the conventional, belt driven fan on my Ford 200 and replaced it with a 16” 2,600 CFM, curved 10 blade electric fan. It was not entirely successful so I thought I’d document my findings because it might be useful information.
The fan is an Amazon model. It’s not the cheapest model I could find but it’s also not very expensive. It’s Chinese and marketed under the name Evil Energy. It has reasonably good reviews and the only negatives were from people who clearly don’t understand how to effectively retrofit aftermarket equipment in cars.
My Engine
1966 Mustang Ford 200, small log head, recently built engine, 60 over, just under 9:1 compression, clay smith 64/74 camshaft, HEI ignition, EBay header, Weber 38/38 on the funnel type adapter with a manual transmission.
The Configuration
I installed the fan as a pusher on the front of the radiator because at 16” height and width and just under 3” deep, as a puller fan, it was too close to the water pump pulley and the bolts on the pulley grazed the fan. I may move the radiator forwards a touch to see if I can make it fit as a puller type fan on my next attempt. Looking at my radiator, which I had thought was OEM, I now wonder if it is a larger capacity unit as it appears to have multiple mounting points and may have been retrofitted. It does appear to use the OEM hoses though so maybe it is an OEM size replacement. It does a good job of cooling though and was a recent addition before I bought the car.
I hard mounted the fan to the front of the panel that the radiator mounts to and installed foam rubber between the fan housing and the radiator to protect the radiator from friction and vibration. I’ve had some experience installing electric fans in my other cars so I knew right from the get-go that I was going to hard mount it securely and I knew the plastic zip strap things that they ship with electric cooling fans would never have held the fan in place.
I wired power to the fan through a Bosch style 12 volt relay with a 30 amp fuse and ran 12 gauge wire to the fan. Since I was in the testing phase, I didn’t put in the temp sensor just yet and wired it to trigger on my ignition wire so that if the engine was on, the fan was on. I used the ignition feed on the starter solenoid to trip the relay that supplies 12 volts, directly from the battery to the fan.
The Good
The fan is pretty quiet and vibration free. It does generate a lot of wind noise so if I make another attempt, it’ll definitely be on a temperature controller so that it only comes on as needed which will make tuning by ear a lot easier.
Also, according to the temperature gauge, it cools slightly better than the factory belt driven fan. The belt driven fan does a great job and the temperature gauge is usually just ever so slightly above half way. With the electric fan, the gauge is just under half way so the electric fan, even as a pusher is doing an adequate job of cooling.
The Not So Good
The carburetor heat soaked after driving for a while, when the engine came up to temperature. One of the things I’ve learned about the log-head is that it takes a while for the whole cast iron lump to get up to temperature so there are several stages and a bit of time before it is completely warmed up. With the belt driven fan, there is a lot of air circulation in the engine bay and with the electric pusher fan, there is much less. After about 15 or 20 minutes of driving, the engine was completely up to operating temp and the engine was acting as though it was completely leaned out. The water temp was perfect but the carb was obviously percolating fuel and not happy at all. I did a little triage work to route the fuel line away from the valve cover and intake as much as possible and put a temporary heat shield between the head and the float bowl to reduce the problem. I also bought a 7mm phenolic spacer for the carb. That just arrived and I’ll install it regardless of whether I continue down the path of an electric fan.
After I reduced the heat soak problem, another issue surfaced (I think). I didn’t spend a lot of time looking into it but I think the fan might be introducing RF or EMF interference that was affecting my HEI ignition. My background is in automotive electrical so all of my power circuits (HEI ignition, halogen headlights, electrical fan, etc…) are run off a bank of relays beside the battery, sourced with a 4 gauge cable; power delivery is not going to be a problem. I’ve also gone through the entire electrical on this car and replaced ground straps and power cables.
I haven’t upgraded the alternator/regulator yet but I’m looking at the Ford Windstar alternator as an upgrade unit. That said, with the car idling, headlamps on and the cooling fan powered up, it reads 13.8 volts which is the minimum to charge the battery while running so it would appear that the charging system is keeping up to the load. I haven’t put a scope on the power wire to see if it is full of noise and I haven’t checked for RF but when I was trying to get the car to run correctly, I pulled the fuse on the fan and the car stopped acting up. I know that the fan is loading down the electrical system but it’s still high enough to charge the battery while running so I can only assume that the fan is interfering with the HEI. It might be a case of the Chinese HEI not being adequately shielded from RF and the motor on the fan not being adequately shielded from generating RF. I don’t know yet but the change that occurred when I disconnected the fan was like night and day. It might even be a case of the remote regulator creating RF or EMF. I don’t know but something appears to be affecting the ignition and it’s not a lack of voltage so I can only assume it’s electro-mechanical feedback or RF that’s the problem.
Conclusion
Anyway, I’m back to a belt driven fan. I’ve re-tuned the engine and it runs great. Cooling is not a problem but I’d like to remove the overhead of a belt driven fan eventually so I’ll revisit the electrical fan at a later time.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The fan is an Amazon model. It’s not the cheapest model I could find but it’s also not very expensive. It’s Chinese and marketed under the name Evil Energy. It has reasonably good reviews and the only negatives were from people who clearly don’t understand how to effectively retrofit aftermarket equipment in cars.
My Engine
1966 Mustang Ford 200, small log head, recently built engine, 60 over, just under 9:1 compression, clay smith 64/74 camshaft, HEI ignition, EBay header, Weber 38/38 on the funnel type adapter with a manual transmission.
The Configuration
I installed the fan as a pusher on the front of the radiator because at 16” height and width and just under 3” deep, as a puller fan, it was too close to the water pump pulley and the bolts on the pulley grazed the fan. I may move the radiator forwards a touch to see if I can make it fit as a puller type fan on my next attempt. Looking at my radiator, which I had thought was OEM, I now wonder if it is a larger capacity unit as it appears to have multiple mounting points and may have been retrofitted. It does appear to use the OEM hoses though so maybe it is an OEM size replacement. It does a good job of cooling though and was a recent addition before I bought the car.
I hard mounted the fan to the front of the panel that the radiator mounts to and installed foam rubber between the fan housing and the radiator to protect the radiator from friction and vibration. I’ve had some experience installing electric fans in my other cars so I knew right from the get-go that I was going to hard mount it securely and I knew the plastic zip strap things that they ship with electric cooling fans would never have held the fan in place.
I wired power to the fan through a Bosch style 12 volt relay with a 30 amp fuse and ran 12 gauge wire to the fan. Since I was in the testing phase, I didn’t put in the temp sensor just yet and wired it to trigger on my ignition wire so that if the engine was on, the fan was on. I used the ignition feed on the starter solenoid to trip the relay that supplies 12 volts, directly from the battery to the fan.
The Good
The fan is pretty quiet and vibration free. It does generate a lot of wind noise so if I make another attempt, it’ll definitely be on a temperature controller so that it only comes on as needed which will make tuning by ear a lot easier.
Also, according to the temperature gauge, it cools slightly better than the factory belt driven fan. The belt driven fan does a great job and the temperature gauge is usually just ever so slightly above half way. With the electric fan, the gauge is just under half way so the electric fan, even as a pusher is doing an adequate job of cooling.
The Not So Good
The carburetor heat soaked after driving for a while, when the engine came up to temperature. One of the things I’ve learned about the log-head is that it takes a while for the whole cast iron lump to get up to temperature so there are several stages and a bit of time before it is completely warmed up. With the belt driven fan, there is a lot of air circulation in the engine bay and with the electric pusher fan, there is much less. After about 15 or 20 minutes of driving, the engine was completely up to operating temp and the engine was acting as though it was completely leaned out. The water temp was perfect but the carb was obviously percolating fuel and not happy at all. I did a little triage work to route the fuel line away from the valve cover and intake as much as possible and put a temporary heat shield between the head and the float bowl to reduce the problem. I also bought a 7mm phenolic spacer for the carb. That just arrived and I’ll install it regardless of whether I continue down the path of an electric fan.
After I reduced the heat soak problem, another issue surfaced (I think). I didn’t spend a lot of time looking into it but I think the fan might be introducing RF or EMF interference that was affecting my HEI ignition. My background is in automotive electrical so all of my power circuits (HEI ignition, halogen headlights, electrical fan, etc…) are run off a bank of relays beside the battery, sourced with a 4 gauge cable; power delivery is not going to be a problem. I’ve also gone through the entire electrical on this car and replaced ground straps and power cables.
I haven’t upgraded the alternator/regulator yet but I’m looking at the Ford Windstar alternator as an upgrade unit. That said, with the car idling, headlamps on and the cooling fan powered up, it reads 13.8 volts which is the minimum to charge the battery while running so it would appear that the charging system is keeping up to the load. I haven’t put a scope on the power wire to see if it is full of noise and I haven’t checked for RF but when I was trying to get the car to run correctly, I pulled the fuse on the fan and the car stopped acting up. I know that the fan is loading down the electrical system but it’s still high enough to charge the battery while running so I can only assume that the fan is interfering with the HEI. It might be a case of the Chinese HEI not being adequately shielded from RF and the motor on the fan not being adequately shielded from generating RF. I don’t know yet but the change that occurred when I disconnected the fan was like night and day. It might even be a case of the remote regulator creating RF or EMF. I don’t know but something appears to be affecting the ignition and it’s not a lack of voltage so I can only assume it’s electro-mechanical feedback or RF that’s the problem.
Conclusion
Anyway, I’m back to a belt driven fan. I’ve re-tuned the engine and it runs great. Cooling is not a problem but I’d like to remove the overhead of a belt driven fan eventually so I’ll revisit the electrical fan at a later time.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
