For the longest time we've been rolling with a pair of aftermarket fans for the Scion. They've been doing a pretty decent job of cooling the engine down even with the AC running. There's a couple issues that are present with having fans mounted right on the radiator coils though. One, the fans have only a piece of rubber insulation between the fan body and the coil. Plus, a zip tie is routed through the fins of the coils to hold everything together. There's a lot of intimate contact with the coils of the radiator, with the wrong amount of vibration the only thing standing between normal operation and damaging the radiator. Second, without a shroud over the face of the radiator, we don't get the maximum cooling ability where all air is routed through the fans. Right now we have a lot of dead space around the outskirts of the fans where the only air moving through is natural air when the car is in motion. We're about to change that with an aftermarket fan/shroud assembly.
We picked up an assembly that incorporates the same generic electric fans that we were using before on the car, but with the added bonus of an aluminum shroud/face that bolts in place on the stock radiator. This is convenient as we don't have to use zip ties or any other fasteners to hold the unit in place. I will have to re-do the wire ends as I want to reuse the stock plugs from the old stock fans. That will just involve cutting the plugs from the old aftermarket fans and soldering them to the ends of the wires on the fan/shroud assembly. First thing I had to do to make everything somewhat easy and less dangerous is pull the whole radiator out. Simple thing, drain the rad, pull the hoses, unplug the fans and pull the works out. Of course its never that simple, there's always little variables like the bullshit spring hose clamps or just the tight quarters that has one having to carefully snake their hands around to get to fasteners without damaging anything, hands included. As is always my MO with wiring, I soldered the ends together and used heat shrink tubing to cover the joints. The only exception was on one of the plugs where the plug did not have any wire on it, just the brass tabs in the plug. I removed the tabs and drilled holes in each one then soldered the wire ends to these tabs, then reinstalled them in the plug. The other plug was soldered and covered in heat shrink like normal. I carefully reinstalled the radiator in the car, got everything hooked up then filled the rad with coolant, leaving the cap off while running the engine to allow the system to burp some of the air out. The car got up to operating temperature like normal, even with the AC on, and held just fine, even with the cap off. I put the cap back on and let it run some more, knowing the coolant is circulating through the system. Everything seems good so I buttoned up everything, calling this little job done. Good thing, the old fans I pulled off are the same as the ones on the fan/shroud, so whenever one of those fans dies, I have replacements ready to go easily. I'll just have to swap the ends again. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to play with this car for a minute.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|