What kind of fan are you running?

After I installed a US Radiator aluminum rad in my 70 Jav, the clutch fan I was using was so close I could not remove the fan belts, meaning I had to pull the rad to change a belt.  Not good.  I changed it out for a Summit racing flex fan and a two inch spacer, so no I have plenty of room between the pump snout and the rad.  I tried to use a Taurus type fan, but again, I did't have enough room.  Since then I have added two 12 inch Dereale fans in front set up as pushers with one of their temp controllers.  After watching the Engine Masters video, I am tempted to pull the flex fan and just try the electrics. Possible 20 horsepower gain. Gets mighty hot here in Florida, but should be an interesting science project.  BTW, car always runs about 190F.

At the price those better be good, but if you get the cheaper ones you might not have enough cooling. The two cheap fans I bought (well, $75 or so each IS cheap compared to $460...) work fine as long as I don't run AC though. Spal, Derale, and looks like Cooling Components Inc usually have fans that work well. The others just don't pull enough air for HD use. I'd think the two 12" I have now would be fine for even a stock to mild V-8 without AC though. The only way to get a cheap and good fan is to go junkyard shopping for OEM fans that can be made to work. Mercedes uses a lot of front mount pusher fans if you have room for one.

I had to carve up the back of my Taurus fan to fit, it didn't just go on. Ended up using the mounts on one side, the other I had to cut the edge off and back and drill holes through the shroud for some of those zip tie type fan mounts. Had to get it a little closer to the radiator. Worked great though, really pulled some air on high speed (the only one I used). I think it would cool finw even with AC if it would just fit with the thicker radiator.

73hornut wrote: bobsterfl wrote: After I installed a US Radiator aluminum rad in my 70 Jav, the clutch fan I was using was so close I could not remove the fan belts, meaning I had to pull the rad to change a belt.  Not good.  I changed it out for a Summit racing flex fan and a two inch spacer, so no I have plenty of room between the pump snout and the rad.  I tried to use a Taurus type fan, but again, I did't have enough room.  Since then I have added two 12 inch Dereale fans in front set up as pushers with one of their temp controllers.  After watching the Engine Masters video, I am tempted to pull the flex fan and just try the electrics. Possible 20 horsepower gain. Gets mighty hot here in Florida, but should be an interesting science project.  BTW, car always runs about 190F. Check into the ford contour dual fan and shroud, allows more room for water pump pulley, and is almost a perfect fit for amc rads.

Yep! I'm running Contour fans and the water pump snout will fit in between them perfectly.

I couldn't find a V-6 Contour fan setup in the local pull-a-part (four cylinder use a single large fan). Ended up with a dual fan from a Probe, also found in the last Mercury Cougar. Looks similar and like it will fit... will find out. They are two speed fans also, with one fan slightly larger than the other. After looking for a pic on Google I'm not sure the fan I have came from the car I pulled it off of. The fan set was lying on the engine, radiator had been pulled, so it could be from another car. Will have to take a pic and post, and see how it fits. Might just be an older Probe than I found pics for -- all the pics I found look just like the Contour V6 fans.

For those that don't already know, I have switched the Gremlin over to running the dual contour fans, low and high speeds fully automatic. So far I am seeing my temps running an average of 10 degrees cooler then with the clutch fan and shroud. The previous setup ran about 195-200, and the current setup runs about 185-190, while running a 195 thermostat.