46 replies to this topic

[mini_turbo_pete]

I took my mechanical fan off of my car and just run an electric fan which is off of a nissan cherry turbo, it fits inside the rad shroud, i have had to move the rad over a bit for it to clear the water pump (i had to move the rad anyway to run my intercooler pipe). Driving around town with an 88 degree stat it ran perfect with no overheating at all, after driving it over 60 mph for a couple of minutes it started to heat real fast and would take a couple of minutes to blow the rad cap. I then got a BMW E30 oil cooler to run water through, mounted it on my front panel and it's absolutly perfect now even at prolonged high speeds at high boost.

I think it was David Vizard in one of hi many books wrote that a mechanical fan and water uses about 15hp at high rpm.

You can see the oil cooler/aux rad in this pic under the number plate

[Ethel]

Pretty sure Minispares do a leccy pump don't they?

I can see an obvious advantage for competition cars, but a road car needs to operate at such a wide range of running conditions that it needs water circulation round the engine without necessarily running it through the radiator. You could build a really complex system of valves to direct flow and/or multiple pumps but would it be worth the effort?

A third option could be to use a viscous coupling to drive a mechanical pump.