"I keep the costs lower by completely ignoring all requests for help, customer service, and support!"

that's how I summarized. lol

 

From the reviews I've read from about 8 years back, this guy did his personal best to help out anyone with an issue & built a pretty solid rep on his product and service but it seems that having developed this great rep, he's become extremely picky about what he wants to do. To me it appears that he's not hurting for cash and isn't even interested in getting a manufacturing subcontractor to keep the product flow going. From some reviews I see that you can get your order arbitrarily cancelled or it could take close to 3 months for delivery & since I did want to make this conversion to an e-fan before I get turned into compost, I think I'll pay my money to someone else - Spal is looking better all the time, especially with their PWM-V3 unit. The taurus fan runs full speed at close to 30 amps (there's a 30 amp fuse in-line with the original wiring), so a PWM system should be able to "bump" the speed up, pulse by pulse, until the fan gets to the desired speed without getting into any huge start-up amp values. Once I get some feedback from Spal on how their system actually works, I'll post that. This control method also allows you to run the fan at essentially any speed between 0 and the motor's max and in this way, with a bit of logic, you can keep the engine running at a constant temperature.

 

Well this is a real bummer, I got a reply from Spal & they have discontinued their pulse width modulated products - no reasons given. One supplier isn't interested in selling his product & another that isn't interested in making them. I'll have to re-think this - I could look for some supplier that's still selling their remaining stock of the Spal PWM controller, I could go with an "off-the-shelf" relay based controller, or I could design & build my own of either version. The relay based configuration isn't difficult to make but it still gives you the full in-rush current at start up for the particular motor & I wanted to get away from that. The PWM portion of a controller isn't that difficult either, but I didn't want to get into designing, building, and testing the actual "smarts" of the controller to work a "constant temperature" solution.

 

Are you guys wiring the harness to the battery or keyed ignition source? I found a useable keyed in my underhood fusebox (07 ram) . But its drawing to much current from thr circut so i had to put it back on the battery. Not a big deal i guess but it runs til the thermostate tells it to cut off.(after the truck is cut off) thanks

 

I wired mine into the heated seats fuse. I had it even though I don't have heated seats.

 

I would imagine that there are a few such power source points available on a truck that's not "fully loaded". I haven't decided yet as to whether I want a power source that's "always hot" or just hot when the key is ON. With relay controllers (my own design), I've always had them power off when the key is off, so I'd take any convenient source point that I could all a fused wire to, and this, I'd use only as a relay activation circuit. This takes very little power, so regardless of what's on a circuit, a fraction of an amp shouldn't kill it. I'd use the hi-amp side of that relay to be the source for the circuit I was adding. I've always found it easier to get a power distribution panel of some variety (aftermarket or from another vehicle) and connect this to the battery & use this as the focal point for all my electrical add-ons. I like to get ones that have both relay & fuse capability that use the same type of relays and fuses as the rest of the vehicle has.

At the moment, I'm doing some research on Painless fan products - they offer a PWM capable controller series that sound pretty solid, although more expensive. Once I've decided on what product I want to use, I'll draw a schematic of what I intend to install and post it here.

 

I installed the Flex-a-lite Black magic extreme kit on my 08 Dakota.
It was a PERFECT fit to the core of the rad and came with the control box.
Not sure how tight it would be with a gas engine but it was a tight fit with the Cummins.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/FLX-180/

 

I have a small affordable logic controller, called an "Arduino". It's a prototyping board that has endless possibilities. It can be programmed, with C, to do just about anything. I have been thinking of using it in some way to control an efan, or something else automotive related. The controller itself cannot run anything more than tiny motors and LEDs, but can send analog and digital signals while accepting input for any kind of sensor. They are only around $30 and there is a lot of resources for help around the web.

Could something like that help in any way?

 

Flexalite makes a progressive controller for efans its $110 on summit. Comes with a inline fuse and has a lead to ignition so the unit is switched on and off with the truck.

 

That's essentially what you'd need to get from paper to first working prototype and can be used to work out most of the bugs from your functional profile. The technical risks and development time would largely be dependent on how "smart" you'd want to make this controller. If the desired operational profile only included reducing in-rush current to utilize higher capacity fans, that wouldn't take much effort - the PWM section would remain roughly the same and the pulse control section could be set to "bump" the motor speed up to some specific level and then modify this speed with change to the pulse train based on change to the input signal(s) from the temp sensor(s). If however, the designed profile became more complex to include things like over-temp protection, over-current protection, constant temp coolant control, etc., the design and debug tasks increase exponentially - risk of overlooking some critical path can also increase dramatically. I want to install an e-fan & reasonable controller while I'm installing the body-lift kit in the next couple of weeks, so I really don't want to dive into a development that's going to further cut into my available wrenching time and possibly put my truck at risk due to some oversight. If I don't make an "off the shelf" selection this week, I'll be leaning towards making a simple relay based controller with a couple of thermal switches to give me a robust & automatic controller that will be able to cycle the ford fan through it's OFF, LO Speed, and HI Speed selections as the temp goes up/down.