Budget E-fan setup, will it work?
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E fan is a good way to go BUT it wouldn't be the emergency fix for a bad fan clutch. I my self would keep the shroud and mount the fan in it some how and use it to my advantage. I have been around the new v8 lines of the big 3 and they seem to run more on than off at an idle. even when its pretty cold out. My 01 durango has a 5.9 in it and that clutch is very lazy. I guess thats why they put a little pull e fan so ac doesn't suffer. Drop one of those fan clutches in your truck it will fit. but come summer in stop and go traffic the ac will suffer.
#19
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Georgia/East Florida
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2500 CFM of that one would be the bare minimum I would go to. I dunno if I'd go to it simply for the fuel gains, you'd probably see a modest gain around town, but any advantage of an efan diminish with rpms as a clutch fan becomes less parasitic as rpms go up.
I have one, a Flex-a-Lite I paid $279 for about five years ago. Has been flawless since I put it in. I did see about a 1.5 mpg gain in city driving and it does free up a bit of HP that a clutch fan would draw at low rpms.
But the initial reason I got mine was I got stuck in literally miles of stop 'n go traffic on I95 one day due to a very severe accident. 98* day and I watched my temps go up as I was barely moving, but traffic never really completely stopped long enough to shut the truck off. I not only had to kill the A/C and roll the windows down, but had to crank the heat to keep the engine from getting too hot.
After that, I said f*ck this, and bought the efan as it would have drawn the same 3300 cfm of air regardless of how slow I was going.
Added benefit is my off-roading is limited to very slow going when hunting or getting to some prime fishing spots back in the swamps. Another plus is you can install a manual over-ride to shut the fan off when crossing deep muck, so as not to suck crap up into the fins of your radiator.
I benefit greatly from an efan, but it's not a mod for everyone. It's an electric device which is much more capable of failure than a mechanical one (clutch fan) and has an electric controller that could fail on you and leave you stranded. It's one more thing that should be inspected on a regular basis. I kept my clutch fan in the tool box of my truck for probably the better part of two years, just in case. That is one good thing, the clutch fan is a bi*ch to get off, but it just spins right back on if you need to use it. Depending on the efan, you could put the clutch fan in and not even have to touch the efan to get you to where you can fix the efan.
Just some food for thought...
I have one, a Flex-a-Lite I paid $279 for about five years ago. Has been flawless since I put it in. I did see about a 1.5 mpg gain in city driving and it does free up a bit of HP that a clutch fan would draw at low rpms.
But the initial reason I got mine was I got stuck in literally miles of stop 'n go traffic on I95 one day due to a very severe accident. 98* day and I watched my temps go up as I was barely moving, but traffic never really completely stopped long enough to shut the truck off. I not only had to kill the A/C and roll the windows down, but had to crank the heat to keep the engine from getting too hot.
After that, I said f*ck this, and bought the efan as it would have drawn the same 3300 cfm of air regardless of how slow I was going.
Added benefit is my off-roading is limited to very slow going when hunting or getting to some prime fishing spots back in the swamps. Another plus is you can install a manual over-ride to shut the fan off when crossing deep muck, so as not to suck crap up into the fins of your radiator.
I benefit greatly from an efan, but it's not a mod for everyone. It's an electric device which is much more capable of failure than a mechanical one (clutch fan) and has an electric controller that could fail on you and leave you stranded. It's one more thing that should be inspected on a regular basis. I kept my clutch fan in the tool box of my truck for probably the better part of two years, just in case. That is one good thing, the clutch fan is a bi*ch to get off, but it just spins right back on if you need to use it. Depending on the efan, you could put the clutch fan in and not even have to touch the efan to get you to where you can fix the efan.
Just some food for thought...
#20