I've talked to some big rig owner operators who were thinking about replacing their mech fans with electric fans, but none who actually have. Conventional wisdom tells me it won't work very well when pulling a heavy load, but I was hoping to hear from anyone who's tried it, maybe with a pickup or whatever. With the price of fuel constantly threatening to increase, it might be worth looking into.

 

a similar discussion was just started here https://www.dieselbombers.com/chevy-...dmax-guys.html

if you are not towing or hauling any loads you should be fine. some of these fans are quite expensive, buy you a lot of diesel for the cost of one

 

Yeah, I saw that discussion, he seemed to be looking for a specific kit to fit his application and I didn't want to hijack his thread with a general question about towing with a truck using electric fans. The manufacturers don't seem to recommend it, but we don't always follow manufacturers recommendations, do we? Thanks for any info.

 

I know there was a lot of talk about it on some of the Ford forums, and it seemed like no one could find an electric fan capable of pulling the same CFM as the stock setup... I know a few guys using them, but none of them tow and know this.

 

well said. if you want it for daily driving and wont put a load on it much i think you will be fine.

since i blocked my EGR my engine takes forever to get up to operating temp. thus i am experimenting with my stock engine fan, i removed it just over one week ago and have been driving to and from work with out any fan. right now it does not get any hotter then with the fan. now i dont think i can get away with this in stop and go traffic as you need to be driving forward to push the air through the radiator. i am doing this to see if there is any MPG gains to be had. and to play it safe i have the fan in my back seat.

the only problem i see is, how long will it take to pay off of the electric fan set up with the money saved at the pump?

say you found a setup that only cost $500 and it improved your MPGs by 2 miles (optimistically).

at lets say $4.15 a gallon this would equal about 120 gallons

at maybe 20 MPGs average with the fans this would take 2,400 miles

this is actually looking better then i thought! with my driving distance it would take 6 months to pay it off. now lets say it didn't get you that much and the fans cost more like $650, then one year seems more realistic. still pretty good in my opinion

 

I have a 93 12v in a superduty and put dual fans out of a caddy sts and they've never kicked on. I don't tow a lot but have pulled 13k a handful of times and still didn't kick on. Now I only push 200 or so hp. I hear of guys running late model ford Taurus fans, they push about 450cfm per fan. I have seen aftermarket electric fan clutches for most trucks. I drive truck and big trucks use a air-actuated fan clutch, so the fan free-wheels till the temp hits 200f or you hit the manual overide, so I don't see much of a benefit to electric fans on a big truck since you'd need about 20 electrics to get the cfm's needed. I think the electric fan clutch with an aggressive fan would be the cats *** for the pulling crowd

 

i have searched for this but was having a hard time coming up with any suppliers for this on a Duramax. i have even toyed with the idea of modding a A/C clutch for this.

do you have any links or know of any suppliers? i think this would be the best option for our diesels.

sorry if this sounds like a hijack

Jason

 

The only one I saw is US Gear cyclone fan, from US Gear in Chicago

 

Thanks for the input, good to hear some other options