Back when the wife and I had our permanent reserved seats at Charlotte, Bristol, and were going to many others ... sitting in long lines of cars in often high heat, wanting to run AC and sometimes seeing the temp gage climb, I hung a big e-fan in front of the radiator and simply put a manual switch on it. My car had a good clutch on it, I replaced it once with Ford part to be sure ... but after that when sitting in that traffic, see the temp climb, flip the switch, temp drop, AC cooled off.

Just a thought.

 

I've towed some random stuff (snow mobiles, wave runners, flat bed trailer) up to Tahoe but nothing major. I'm from the bay area and go to both north and south shore, so I hit some good climbs. A diesel would of been a better choice but I like the f150 a lot!

 

Alright, here is my write up on the Taurus fan and Flexalite controller installation.

http://www.modmyf150.com/2010/02/15/...or-cooling-fan

Took about 5 hours and came out really well! It was pretty easy to mount the fan in the factory shroud and it's pretty quiet as well, at least from in the cab.

 

Excellent write up! I might be following your setup to the T!

Quick question, where did you pick the fan up from? Junkyard, eBay?

Edit: Just saw the amazon link...

 

Looks like the amazon link is to a Town Car fan - is that the same one?

 

They are nearly identical having the same motor but differing fan shrouds. I think the later Lincoln Mark VIII has an extra blade but I'll have to look it up to see if I remember correctly...

Some of the Amazon sellers don't always have stock on the Taurus fan so you can substitute the Lincoln one instead. I've seen a few Taurus fans on Ebay as well.

 

I just saw in a thread that the 2010 f150's have e-fan(s). I might wait to see how much a swap to one of these guys might cost. I'm not too keen on the idea of running a 15 year old fan.

 

I saw that too. Obviously, a factory-engineered setup would be best but is likely very costly. And the electronics for controlling the fans is probably not going to work with earlier model trucks. The PCM would be controlling the fans and PCMs are different year to year. You could use the fans and housing with an aftermarket controller though. I still see the setup costing over $500.

As far as a 15 year old fan, the fan might be old but it has most likely not been used for all 15 years. I looked at the brushes and they are about 30% worn. And the armature is in good shape. The FAL controller also varies the speed of the fan according to cooling needs, unlike the Taurus controller which is basically an on/off switch. This should help the motor last quite a bit longer.

 

YDM. have you towed yet with your fan installed? if so how do you like it?

 

I haven't towed anything yet. Still pretty cold in the Tahoe area so no camping yet. But I do like the increase in mileage. Averaging about 18.7 on the highway where I used to average 16.8-17. I drive 100 miles per day so I can get easy comparisons since it's pretty much the same route every day.

I probably won't be towing anything until the end of March but if it ends up earlier, I'll definitely post back my experience.

 

lol Its not a TT, its a TA!!!! ha ha. BTW I LOVE Trans ams/firebirds. all of them except 78-81 style. used to have an 89 Firebird V6 and a 96 Trans am. Miss them both. Firebird was traded in towards Trans am and 6 months later i hydroplaned and ramped over a driveway so not more Trans am for me. But my Trans am was silver too. Nice car man

 

Thought I should give an update on my Taurus/Mark VIII e-fan mod. I just completed a 1168 mile trip towing a 7,500 lb. TT. There were many long grades and the weather was hot. In summary, the Taurus e-fan is NOT up to the task of cooling the engine when towing at GCWR. See my comments about this here:

Ford F150 Electric Cooling Fan Installation Comments

Needless to say I am a bit disappointed but on the bright side, I get to do some more cooling system mods!

 

Sorry man, GCWR?

 

Gross Combined Weight Rating - the combined weight of the tow vehicle and the trailer being towed. In my case, 14,500 lbs.

 

Man what a let down!!! I was hoping for good results since I drive the same grade... I'm going to jump to a f350 when the time comes vs trying to reinvent the wheel.