One other question on the electric fans, if I may...

Can the fans be wired to respond to the AC being turned on, or are they wired only into the engine temperature?

Thanks,
Lee

 

yea... just find out what wire is the switched 12V for the clutch and tie that into the relay setup

 

I agree with taping into the compressor wire and powering the relay. But, in the winter, if the fan should come on by way of the thermostat, it may engage the A/C clutch. And unless you have a 20-30 amp feed to the relay COIL (not the contacts), I'd say you will cook a wire or 2. It all depends on if your thermostat switch closes the circuit on the hot wire, or the ground. If you tie the compressor + into a relay that has a ground break switch, then positive juice is already at the relay, continuously. If the compressor is tied in, the clutch would engage. And I know they draw some hefty amperage. I would suggest seperate relays in that instance, and the use of diodes. Very easy to install if you can crimp wires.


Just my 2 cents.


Good luck.

 

well yea.. by no means did i intend for you to supply the fans by the ac clutch ciruit at all.. thats obserd... what i meant was.. run the 12v switched wire from the ac clutch (gets power when you kick on the A/C) to the relay that controls the fans.. and to do it correclty.. youd have to run extra relays to keep the circuits seperate untill needed.. almost like a 5wire relay system.. and can be confusing if you dont have experience working with relays.. like DD said.. you dont want to send a 12V signal back to the ac clutch when the fans turn on from the tstat signal wire.. i read somewhere when i was installing mine (doing my research) that you should just tap into the ac clutch as an activator signal as well.. i didnt do this because for some dumb reason the clutch for the compresor comes on when you hit defrost too..regardless of temp.. and i didnt want my fans running hardly at all in the winter unless needed..

honestly during the summer here i really didnt notice a different in the AC performance.. i mean when your actually driving.. the moving air through the grille cools everything down.. and if was sitting for a long time with the a/c on and noticed the air not gettong cold then i would kick on one fan manually by my switches..

 

One thought has occured to me. I'm wondering about the performance of my tranny cooler without the constant flow of air through it with the clutch fan installed. Just something else to think about. Any thoughts??

 

aftermarket/aux cooler or the internal rad. cooler? you wouldnt have to worry while your drive..as i said above .. the moving air does its job ! and if you sitting idle for a while.. you could kick on the fans from a switch setup... so you have total controll.. i wouldnt suggest letting the fans run just off hte elec. tstat .. i would advise having some control over them by switches in the cab.

 

Both the internal and the factory installed auxillary unit. Since you have a temp gauge to watch the coolant temp, it's not a big deal, you can always use a switch to turn on your fan(s) if you notice the temp going up a bit. But without a gauge for tranny temp (only an idiot light), I don't have any old level of reference as to how the constant flow of air helped with the tranny cooling. Don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. Maybe i should install a gauge for the tranny so I can get a baseline if you will to compare to the electric fan performance. I really don't think it's a big deal, just something that crossed my mind. I would probably just turn the fan on when doing any kind of towing anyway. Any thoughts??