For the past week I have heard and clicking and sqeeking from under the hood and sure enough it was the low temp troyer e-fan. It seems that maybe the bearing in the fan has went out. You can watch the fan move around in the fan housing causing it to click, knock, and sqeek. I called troyer performance and got a replacement price of $127.00 said that was all they could do. I would never have thought that the fan from a $400.00 e-fan kit would only last a year. Guess I should have done more research before I bought the kit. Does anyone have a cheaper alternative for a fan or am I stuck with the 127.00 price tag.

 

You could look at te J C Whitey web site. They had a 16" Derale fan for around $100.

Can't guarantee if that price is still current.

 

Yeah, put your stock fan back on. Should be free.

 

Flexalite fan ???

 

yeh thats why i dont buy troyer products
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...6733448&rd=1,1
2 year warranty higherflow than troyer fans and its 45 bucks and reversable.

 

I have the Flexalite fans and other then one controller going bad due to mounting it too close to the rad They've been great ,I mounted the new controller on the firewall and all is well

 

Read my posts in this thread for some advice.

https://www.f150online.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=236580

HiO

 

Fans:
There are good ones and ones that just get by.
The good ones use ball bearings, the lesser ones use sleeve bearing.
I lose attic fans at about the rate of 3 to 4 years.
The heat dries up the lube. If there is no way to lube the bearings you will have a problem sooner or later. These won't run foever.
The Lincoln Mark VIII fans and the Taurus fans last a long time but are made to higher standards and still fail at times.
These fans on the market are not built with the highest quality so expect to have to change them same as tires or any other part that goes bad.
The starting currents of these fans is quite high depending on how big the unit is.
This burns the relay contacts after awhile. It may be worthwhile to wire two relays in parallel to share the load and lengthen the life of the relays.
As the fan motor bearings go dry the load current gets even higher.
Your just getting to catch it all 'after' the fan is shot and see fuses melted and relays bad.
This is why engineering should take place to pick parts, circuit layout and current draw considerations for reasonable expected life.
At least you change oil in the engine. The fan 'engine' never get's any.
Lastly, I would be hesitant about blaming a vender for parts he sells from his supplier. He doesnot make them and has to handle failure same as any other store would do under warrenty and time limits.

 

Thanks for all the responses but I guess I am stuck with the $127.00 fan. I do not want to go back to the stock fan. I also did not mean to blame troyer peformance I have had awesome service and tech support from them and until now not one problem with anything. They even next day aired my custom excal 2 to me so I could have it for my 1000 mile trip at no charge. I just meant that I should have searched all my alternatives before just buying one of the most popular kits. I am sure that they sell thousands of these kits and we only here about the ones that went bad. There is quite a few threads on this forum about these fans going out that I could have read and maybe took a different route or maybe not. Well I guess thats just part of moding your truck but leaving it stock sucks!!

 

HI!... Well I've been running twin 16" DERALE electric fans for over 8 years with *ZERO* problems. I was the 1ST to install them back in "99". Sounds to me like you got a bad fan from the factory. Derale fans are one of the best on the market for durability.

 

SO do E-Fans really reduce the pull on a motor that much? Can you really "feel" the difference? From my reading it sounds like it requires 10 to 20 hp to spin the factory fan and that seems pretty asenine to me.......

 

It costs engine power to run the fan, the water pump, the alternator, the power steering pump, the A/C compressor and anything else the motor has to 'power'.
You don't get all those supporting functions for nothing.
Generation of power by the alternator usually has a rule of about 1.5 hp per 1000 watts of load. As you add electrical load, the power consumed from the motor goes up.
Even the electric fan is not a free power saving as is sometimes said.
The other hardware also has variable rates of power consumption depending on loading.
Water pump; as the rpm goes up so does the power consumed to drive it.
After starting the motor, the alternator has to force hi current into the battery. This requires more power from the motor.
Night lighting requires more power.
If you notice, the PCM has the ability to raise the idle when some of these loads are turned on at idle to recover the idle speed and prevent stalling.
The motors lose a good 50 hp +/- runnning these items in various combinations and speeds.

A 4.6L engine rated at 230 hp is lucky the get 200 to 210 at the flywheel under perfect conditions and even less to the rear wheels after the trans, rear end losses and all drive line loses are subtracted.
Making any changes that increase efficiency of power tranfer, reduced losses.
Thais is the only way a gain is made is to recover some power back to the motor. No extra power is ever produced on an N/A engine by these changes. Only with a blower type that generates more 'NET" power than it consumes, becomes a gain, or fuel high in oxygen content to generate hi cylinder pressures which is the same as a blower does..
None of this is in addition to internal motor changes that is outside the discussion.

 

I am going to go either with a OEM fan from a wrecker, or one of the standard non- kit fans I can get for around $60 - they look identical to the $400 kit fans, and I just can't see spending that much to 'save gas' since $400 will buy a lot of gas and I'm not building a showpiece - I'm very much into the idea of efans but just think there's a lot of junk out there.

I also plan, if possible, to use the old belt-driven fan shroud to mount the fan, rather than mounting straight to the rad which seems to cause problems - and then have the advantage of the directed airflow.

If I decide on a second fan, I'll front mount it, as a pusher - if it's not directly on the radiator, it'll reduce the risk of the fans driving each other...
I guess the other advantage of the relay is it eliminates the risk of back voltage from the fan when it's off, and driven by the wind as a dynamo - I've heard of computer power supplies damaged by DC fans being cleaned with compressed air...

 

Funny...one day while messing around under the hood, I noticed the entire fuse block (the one in the red line that runs straight to the battery with the 35 amp fuse in it) on my Troyer fans was completely melted!!! No idea how this happened. I never noticed it because the 1st fan had completely kept temps normal and I never noticed anything out of the ordinary. Couldn't find anything wrong with the fan or wiring at all, like a dead ground, short or anything. Anyone got a clue on this one??? I spliced in a new fuse holder line thingie, and everything works great and completely normal again. Got me???

Anyways, here's a source for Spal fans...

www.the-fan-man.com

 

The only thing that does that is excessive current flow or resistance causing a hi heat dissapation point to develope.
With melted insulation and holder you will never know where the fault originated from.
It could have even been the fuse prongs were not seated fully into the holder.
As long as it was all replaced and no further problem shows, then all's well.