engine temp.

[westport_wayne]

say frank, your a crown man. i got a 84 crown with the 6-71 turbo- allison 4 speed auto. when im going up a steep hill or have been in cites with hills, recently lewiston/clarkston when the water temperature guage starts to climb i shift down a knotch and run her at a little higher r.p.m. and the temp goes right back down. but out on the highway if i run the ol gal over 53 to 57 miles an hour she starts to warm up ??? say its hot out and i run along at 60 the temp guage starts to climb. cut her back to 55 no more problems. any ideas ? also i took the radiator shutter out of my bus cause i took it to montana and it was hot out there. does this hurt anything. i live in n.w. oregon so the weather is never extremly hot or cold. thanks john

[frank-id]

Hey John. There are many factors that influence engine temps. In most cases of high engine temps, the radiator core needs replacing.. Ya did good removing the shutter system as I personally am not a big fan. Mine is removed also. In trying to diagnose a heat problem, lots of checking is required. The number one problem in over heat is a clogged radiator core, next is erratic thermostat operation, soft radiator hoses, water pump is worn out, impellar abrased away, fan belt not driving fan hub and too slow an engine speed. Every time an engine with guages is operated, the temp rise should be observed. My old Crown had a stuck thermostat that never would allow the engineto rise to a good operating temperature of at least 185 degrees F. A very serious cooling system upgrade is to do a little modification to the fan assembly. The modern trucks are all now using a 7 or 8 blade fan. These fans will move more air with less HP loss. The factory fans were about 20.5 diameter, but a 22.5 fan will fit very nicely and move lots of cooling air. Drawing air into the side of a bus takes lots of HP and is not very effective compared to typical ram air. The optimum cooling fan set up is using an air clutch that is either driver or temperature controlled. This is my next major upgrade. Carefully monitoring the temp action from a cold start will probably give some indications to any cooling faults. Lastly, it is good is have a water filter with some dessicant to reduce cooling system internal failures. I now have a large filter that is changed just once a year based on 25K miles.
Frequently using coolant test strips will also give an indication of cooling system acidity. Using only distilled water from the food market is also very good, as well or city water has lots of minerals that slowly reduce the radiator's ability to cool. Frank Cummings are great engines...

[westport_wayne]

hey thanks for the info frank. actually the ol 6-71 runs out pretty good. with that shutter removed it takes for ever to warm up but once it does it will run between 170 and 190 depending on how hot or hilliy it is. we took her out highway 12 through yakima . talk about hot now. i will check all that stuff out you talked about. and again thanks. john

[frank-id]

There is a hand held portabletool that uses infrared to spot measure temps. This is a great tool and ofter found on Ebay for about $90. This remarkable tool will measure up to 950degrees F. Besides using the tool to check a cooling system, the seperate engine cylinders can be checked for equal temperature. This tool is perfect to check an engines performance.
Frank

[vonslatt]

I just pulled my radiator to get it re-cored.

More pics here: http://www.vonslatt.com/bus-mechlog.shtml

I was seriously considering replacing the engine fan with one of these:

http://www.electricfanengineering.com/offroad.htm

But the fan for my application is $800. Still, I'd like to go electric so I may try a pair of 400 Watt Ford Taurus fan/shroud/motor assemblies. I think they will do fine for the North East and I would add a mist nozzle in front of the radiator so I could add evaporative cooling if needed to get over a mountain. After all, I'll have 100 gallons of water on board anyway.

Cheers,

Jake.

[the_experience03]

I'm all for the FWD car fan idea. I know a lot of guys who use these in offroad applications. With their radiator in the back of the truck running 5.29 axle ratios, a 2.28:1 ratio in the front t-case, and 4.7:1 in the rear case, they obviously have very high engine speeds with basically no forward speed. You could get out and eat lunch and let the truck idle along and it might be only 10 yards further down the trail when you're done .

Anyway...the fourwheeling crowd has two basic groups....the ones that spend $50,000+ on their toys and the guys like me that scrounge. I know for a fact that the scrounged fans work every bit as well as the expensive aftermarket electric fans so I vote in favor of them myself.

I still find it amazing that everyone else has all these problems getting heat when I still have my weather front closed up tight in 50 degree temps and it's just now starting to get a comfortable temp. The problem with having my weatherfront closed is that it makes the intercooler kind of ineffective. Oh well....summer is coming.

[phillbus914]

Originally Posted by vonslatt

But the fan for my application is $800. Still, I'd like to go electric so I may try a pair of 400 Watt Ford Taurus fan/shroud/motor assemblies. I think they will do fine for the North East and I would add a mist nozzle in front of the radiator so I could add evaporative cooling if needed to get over a mountain.

Jake.

I'm thinking of doing something like this on my bus as well. I plan to keep the stock fan in place since it is almost impossible to get to. I want to add a fan to the front of the innercooler/radiator to push air through when the temp starts to rise. I’d have it come on automatically (preferred) or manually.

My belt driven cooling fan clutch doesn’t seem to "engage" when the temp starts to rise. It just seems to coast along at a slow speed. I've had the temp gage (unknowingly) climb up to about 240* during slow stop & go traffic.

I'd like to add something cheap like an old Taurus fan/shroud to the front to push extra air but I'm wondering how a fan that's made to pull air through a radiator would push air? Could I just run it backwards? Do they make fans that push air (I'm talkin junkyard stuff here) as in is there some car out there that has a front mounted fan that pushes air that I could look for in a junkyard? I’m not looking to spend 100’s of dollars here if I can avoid it.

[Griff]

A fan is a fan, stand on one side it sucks, stand on the other, it blows. Its gonna move the same amount of air regardless of which side of the intercooler you're mounting it on. The problem may be mounting it, as the usual mounting (behind) is designed to draw air through the radiator, etc.
Since were talking a DC motor here, if you front mounted it using the normal mounts it would try to draw air through from the engine side. Simply reversing the wires will make the fan turn the opposite way, therefore drawing fresh air from in front of the bus and pushing it through your intercooler. A note of caution here though, some fans have diodes in the circuitry that may get fried by hooking the wires up backwards, but most don't have them. On some fans it is possible to simply flip the fan motor in the mounting bracket so it faces the other way, and connect the wires the way they were designed.

[the_experience03]

A fan is a fan, but a shroud is not just a shroud. A fan in front of the radiator obviously is not going to blow air over the whole thing unless you do some sort of ducting because the the fan is a circle and the radiator is a rectangle. That's why puller fans are considered more efficient. Because of the shroud, all the air they draw must come from the whole surface of the radiator or intercooler. Also, some fan blade profiles are actually better suited to one application or another though in our world of ultra low performance I don't think it would matter.

[vonslatt]

Now this subject I know, having worked for the company the designed the electric cooling fan for the Taurus and many other cars.

Most modern fans are custom designed for the resistance of the radiator they come on. You can expect that they will work well on a radiator with similar resistance but a puller won't work well if installed in a pusher arrangement. It'll just stall and not move much air. And you can't spin the fans backward, you might get some air, but you'll be wasting a lot of power. Besides, the motor brushes are off-set on the armature on many motors and will wear out really fast.

There are a lot of after-market pusher and a few OEM pusher booster fans. If memory serves they were an option on some Jeeps and several BMWs and Mercedes had pushers.

However, the sweetest setup is going to be something like what we did on the mid 90's EN-114 platform (Town Car, Grand Marquis, Crown Vic).

Between the engine driven fan and the radiator there is an electric fan that spins in the opposite direction from the engine driven fan. It not only adds it power to the engine fan but because of the reverse rotation air enters the engine driven fan at a more advantageous angle making IT more efficient as well.

This fan come in it's own ring shroud and should be easy to adapt to another application.

Wow, google found me a picture:



The radiator side is facing you.

Jake.