Big W's Econo 66

Yup.. was thinking the same thing TP with regards to a piece of tin - to block the cooler a bit. Great minds think a like...lol. Also just got back from the junkyard with 2 electric fans for $40.00....Man it's so hard to leave that place...lol. But I did find a car in there with an electric fan and a factory v-8. Was a Ford of some kind, 4 door luxury boat from the mid 80's. Unfortunately the front end was hit so hard that the fan was cut in half, so I couldn't get any measurements off of it to see if it could be used on our Econo's. Will post a pic or 2 later on tonight....have to go install the new fan.....and temp gauge.

Camera battery good to go. Here are the 2 fans I picked up yesterday...
..This fan is from a 92 Taurus wagon with a 3.8 with air conditioning. Complete with 30 amp fuse and as much wire as I could grab. The fan is 3 wire, but goes to a 2 wire after that little black box that is attached to the fan.
..
..
..

This other fan is from a late 80's Taurus I believe...It had a 3.0 v-6 with air. This fan is a 2 wire and man does it pull a lot of air. Might be a great replacement for those running stock motors that would like to switch over to an electric fan. The fan shroud is thicker then the 17" and it is only a 16" fan, but I am pretty sure it pulls more air then a stock mechanical fan would. And again it comes with it's own shroud as well.
..
..
..The 16" 2 wire has a nicer shroud, as it covers a little bit more of the rad. And of course both will need to be trimmed down a little to fit. Also the thickness of the 16" is greater then the 17". So not sure what the distance is from water pump to rad on a stock cooling system. But at any rate just some more food for thought.

Save me the two-wire... not fair that you would go to the local salvage and pull all the Taurus fans! lol

HAHAHA...ya no kidding eh. @ $20.00 a fan It's definitely the way to go. There's a few more out there at Bucks. Only one Lincoln 18" fan there and it was smashed beyond all recognition. I am hoping to cut into the 17" and get it mocked up for brackets today.....but something tells me the honey-do list is going to take priority...lol. One more thing ..... Does anyone know what that black box is attached to the fan. It was bolted up under the rad support,and resting on top of the radiator in the 92 taurus. 3 wires in, and 2 coming out??? I was thinking it was some kind of thermo switch, that when hot enough would switch over and allow the fan to run on high. But also the fan would be running on low speed when it switched over to high, thus only needing a 30 A fuse on the harness. The amp draw would be lower then if the fan had to start on high. Please correct me if I am out to lunch on this theory.

those are some good ones- there are some possibly larger & higher output =are on the lincolns series - there is a post on using those here and wiring diagram hookups i do believe -maybe in the chev section from=m1 dadio ??

Can't those be mounted vertically? How close are they to our vertical rads?

Yeah, I was out at Bucks last week getting a new rear axle for my Astro... diff grenaded on me! Couldn't afford to troll the yard for other goodies! If the Lincoln is still out there, try to get:

Trunk latch mechanism.... they have a feature that will pull the trunk closed!
Horns... these bad boys are apparently very loud! A lot of fun apparently!

Doing some measurements on the 67 rad and found it to be about 17.25 inches wide by 17.25 inches tall. Now my new rad that was made using my 66 top and bottom tanks measures 17.5 inches wide by 19.875 inches tall. It fits just fine and has 3 rows in it. So now that I have done this ... I will remove some of the rad shroud length from the 17" electric fan and mount it vertically. Length of this shroud is about 26 inches long, and can afford a trim. The width however is only 16" wide. So I won't have 100% of the rad covered, .75 inches of rad will still be open on both sides of the fan. I believe this should still be more then adequate to cool the engine.

I wonder if creating a shallow frame on the rad support just using sheet metal and attaching the fan to it would be a good idea...

Well I thought of doing something like that out of aluminum. Cut a piece to fit against the outside of the rad support and use the same bolts that hold the rad on to hold this in place as well. Cut a circle in it and fold top and bottom tabs in till they were the same depth as the rad brackets that are welded to the rad. then just as you said Corey, cut the fan circle out of the plastic shroud and screw it to the aluminum sheet....Then I priced out the aluminum...OUCH...So I will continue with plan B and mount the hole fan assembly to my rad with steel strips on the back side and bolt them to the inside of the rad brackets. Here is where it's at so far...
..
..
..
..also thought it might it be to tight to the water pump if I used the aluminum idea. Might also have to move the rad forward half an inch, so I was thinking this was the best bet for closeness to the radiator with a factory built system by Ford. Going to make all the brackets at work tomorrow and paint them tomorrow night. I will take more pics before I put it all back in..Later

I would imagine that the black box is just a relay. These things pull quite a lot of power and will definitely have had one somewhere in the original vehicle. You should have a nice chunky earth wire, a similar sized 12v feed, and a thinner trigger wire...

Makes sense, Sy.

Big W, what if you could JBweld some similar plastic flat out to the sides? Mind you, does it really matter if the shroud only covers 90% of the core? You could try it without. I bet the airflow over that 90% improves enough to have a positive impact on cooling.

OK Guys - heres -something that happened to me yesterday= driving my ol 56 chev pu down a gravel road -i have an elecrtic aftermarket fan on it for 20++ years now - the fan was mounted on the radiator =Thru the fins- with those plastic mounts and foam spacers under the fan leggs . Over time the foam had gotten loose -id guess & on that gravel road- the thru the fins mounts cut into the radiator cooling cores & dumped coolant out. Now ive got to fix that radiator this morning and remount that fan again-just a lifes experience & something to look out for in time. Happy Vannin

That sux!

Were those "through the rad straps" plastic or nylon or metal, just curious.... I never was a big FAN (no pun intended) of mounting a fan through the rad with straps. Always thought bad things would happen. And I just read a story about a guy who just spent like $300.00 on a fan assembly and it fell off and he drove over it...OUCH..cough..cough..choke. I believe in bolting stuff on to existing metal or make brackets to make this happen. But just the same sorry to here about your rad..

Fan is in and looks not to shabby I might add. I started with a peice of angle iron from and old bed frame, cut it to size and bolted it to the bottom of the rad support with radiator in so I could figure out where and how high to put it.
...
..
. I then took the bottom part of the fan shroud that was cut off and laid it over the top of the shroud and screwed it on to seal the top.
...
Then I put the rad shroud in and set in on the bottom angle iron bracket for fit and centering. Then while I was out scowering my steel pile looking for something to hold the shroud tight to the top of the rad, I came upon this squeegy. problem solved. has threaded bolt holes and everything.
..
.
Then with a little finese a hammer and a chop saw, I turned it into this lovely top bracket.
.. .
using 2 vice grips I twisted the ends so that they would match up to the angle of the rad support and drilled through existing holes and put in a couple of 1/4 inch bolts...and shaZZZam it was a done deal.
.. .
..
So after it's all said and done there was actually a little bit of space between the water pump and the new fan motor...How much you ask????

shure hope this doesn't bite me in the @ss later. And I don't meen the smoking...lol.

plugged the wiring back in and....CHECK...another peice off the list.

. I wasn't able to try it out, as we had to go see CCR. Man they can still rock. was a great show... FUN's OVER...BACK TO WORK..lol

I've heard good stuff about the concerts at the Ex this year, CCR included. (BTW, I just read about the stage collapse tragedy at Indianapolis' Fair at the Sugarland outdoor concert I hope oue VV friends in the area are unscathed).

Back on topic, that's a hilarious pic of your fan clearance! You might be able to get a water pump with a shorter impeller shaft / shallower pulley. Great work!

I will probably have more space in between once I bolt the front of the dog house back on. I noticed last time that I had to pull the rad support forward about a half an inch to get the holes to line up. But as it stands right now all bolts tight that's where it landed for clearence. But the mystery about that black box hooked up to the fans wiring harness will be figured out today. I unpluged the fan and found three spade terminals comeing out of this box.3 wires in 3 comeing out, makes sence. Now the plug in from the taurus has only 2 wires in and 2 female conectors being used. So, this fan is either running on high all the time (most unlikely) or someone swithed fan motors at one point and put a 3 wire in this car instead of 2 wire. Going to unplug and run jumpers to the fan and see what happens. And hopefully no magic smoke will escape from the wires...lol.

Just finished running the engine with the new fan. Thought I would do that first just to see how it would work just the way it is before checking the fan wires. Not sure if we are at 165 degrees or 195....lol..not sure if I am reading the gauge right.

I believe it to be 165 degrees'ish. The smaller white line in the yellow zone I am thinking is for 190...any takers on this one? And this was after running 6 lawnmower tanks of gas thought it. Temp out side was 80 degrees F. Thermostat is a new 165 and it ran for about 1/2 an hour.

I would say 165, especially if that's what your thermostat is. Mission Accomplished! Did the rad fan cycle on and off?

Nope..it stayed running at one speed only. It's only running off the battery for now. When I start on the wiring I will run it through a sensor on the engine. I still need to find out what that middle wire on the fan is for that does not seem to be plugged in or have power going to it. I am hoping that it is for a higher speed. Now I have to waite till everything kools down before I stick my arm in there. Inside the van temp was probably 200 degrees...lol.

I think I figured it out....This fan, all be it a 3 wire, only has one setting..FAST.. I hooked up wires to all 3 terminals right from the motor and bypassed the box. 1 for ground and 2 for power. the middle terminal when power is hooked up runs the same speed as the outside terminal which gets it power from the Ford harness. This is 12 volts from the battery and both terminals give the same speed. So I guess we may have an after market fan motor designed for 2 different types of wiring harneses or it's one of fords better ideas to have one motor fitting different applications.. And when I touch both wires to power nothing changes..same speed (not that I thought it would, but ya got to try it when you don't no). So we'll leave it the way it is and run one speed, it seems to work really well the way it is. So we'll call this one done and move on to dog house reconstruction.

Unless it has a control module that reduces the current when idling?? Should look up some Taurus diagrams... my brother has a Mercury Sable... might have something in his Haynes manual!

Started to mock up the dog house additions today. Picked up a couple of trailer fenders and cut them down to size. I think this should work nicely as they are bent just right and fit behind and in front of the exhaust manifold..
.. These fenders are 37" long at the bottom edge and only 9" wide. Wheel well is 10ish tall so that will leave me with 1" under the seat for clearance.....
Removed part of the rear section and 21" of the middle section to form the box opening.




.. Next piece will be a top cover for the box, then weld a piece of 1/2 X 1 under the cover to use as a bolt plate so no bolts will be visible from the side of the house when the box is bolted on. The bolts are accessible enough to unbolt just the bottom box to change plugs. Also will weld on bolt plate on the bottom for bolting to the floor same as the factory did. I left 1" from the frame under the floor to weld another 1'2" X 1" flat bar which I will dill and tap the holes after the bottom of the boxes have there bolt strip welded on. I will drill through both at same time so holes all line up nicely. Fill in the missing parts of the floor, then it's off to the other side.