I have an electric fan and water pump installed already and was wondering if there are any drawbacks to having the efan run constantly while the car is running? My truck is a daily driver and I just want to know if this would hurt my truck in any way or if it would be ok to do on a daily driver.

Later
Damon

 

I have the same question....(well i don't actually have the Efan and water pump yet, but i will this week) and just want to make sure i can use it on a daily-driving basis.....thanks guys

 

To begin with running the electric fan constantly will not hurt your truck at all. It simply draws current from the electrical system to energize the dc fan motors. The worse that could happen is blowing a fuse or burning up the electrical dc fan motors. That would cause no damage to your truck itself, unless of course your sitting in traffic or city driving with no fan operation which would cause overheating.

The one draw back to electric fans is if they fail because of a blown fuse or the motors burning up. There is no back up (for burned up electric motors) if your sitting in traffic or slow city driving except to shut down the engine to allow it to cool. However know that it is rare for motors to just burn up.

If your running the A/C when idleing and/or in slow city driving you need the electric fan by the condensor operating to allow for more efficient cooling. If there is no air flow over the condenser you will have poor cooling or no cooling at all from the A/C. So since your installing an electric fan that did not come as standard equipment you may need some additional pieces to insure the fans come on when you turn the A/C on regardless the engine temperature if sitting idel or slow city driving.

However, at freeway speeds you do not need the electric fans operating at all since there is adequate air flow through the radiator and over the condenser, unless of course you tailgate (LOL) then you would need them operating since there would be little air flow.

Normal operation of electric fans are by temperature control and with the majority of new vehicles (not sure if Ford is included or not) that are equipped with electric fans they are computer controlled through the on board vehicle computer by monitoring the temperature and vehicle speed. Mainly they monitor vehicle speed so if the A/C is operated at freeway speeds to not allow the electric fans to operate since it is not needed for airflow due to sufficient airflow at freeway speeds.

The one thing I recommend to anyone with electric fans that are going to have an external switch to control operation is to not allow the fans to run at freeway speeds. The reason I recommend that is it “could” cause the electric motors to prematurely wear out to due to “possible” overheating of the dc motor windings which is caused by the fans spinning faster then originally designed for when energized. It has to do with eddy currents and BEMF in the motor windings.

 

Something else I should mention in case it wasn’t answered in the last post is the question (based on sitting at idle with the truck running or not):

“Will running an electric fan motor continually cause any problems?”

The answer is no, you could connect this fan to the battery and run it for days on in with absolutely no problems. They will not overheat, and running for prolonged times will not hurt the motors. They are designed to be operated continually with no problems, so long as they have adequate air flow nothing blocking the motor and fans ability to draw air across the motor.

It is just like any fan you have in your house except instead of being operated by 115vac it is operated on 12vdc…

To add to the above, if you did run them for prolonged periods of time without the truck running it will draw the battery down...

 

as in the JDM e-fan kit they have a thermo switch in the kit the goes right in to the motor by the oil filter or i should say above the oil filter, so you wouldnt have to worry about having to turn on the fan it just comes on when it needs to, it also has a wire the you link to the relay for the a/c so it also comes on with the a/c is turned on