(car engine struggling, then starting)
- Man, it's 100 degrees out here.
That is an inadequate fan.
But you know what, your engine
can have an inadequate fan too.
Take a look at this.
Man, I'd love to take credit, it's got this flashing,
that used to be bolted to the radiator,
I don't even know what the hell's going on here.
I think this stuff came off a bathtub,
it's got some kind of silicone,
but besides being ugly, it's not effective.
For one thing, it stands off the radiator core,
so while this thing is spinning, let's see,
that way, it's sucking air in and around
in and around, rather than through the radiator core,
so, not good.
What you want, even with a really bad fan like this,
is to have it sealed to the core,
preferably with the shroud that will cover
the entire surface area of the core.
So, no good, that's a bad fan.
This is a lot better, it's not perfect,
because it doesn't cover the entire area of the core,
but we have two 12-inch fans, they're in a shroud
that covers most of the core,
and better still, the two fans together
is 4000 CFM of airflow, and that's pretty much
what you'd want for a V8 high performance engine.
You have to look at the CFM,
and most manufacturers list the air flow by CFM.
More is always better, always, I'll say always.
Now, let me cast this fan aside,
and look at the radiator.
This is an aluminum radiator.
I believe it's made by Champion.
It's got a really thick aluminum core, and it's large.
When it comes to radiators, here's another always.
More capacity is always better.
That's where I'm just going to go out on a limb.
If you want to argue with me on that, so be it,
but I always want a big fan, and a big radiator,
because the worst thing that you can have
is a hot rod that's overheating.
Believe me, one time when I was on the freeway,
and I was kind of in a traffic jam
in my Dodge Dart with the 340,
and I watched that temperature gauge slowly climb and climb
and finally I just couldn't take it anymore,
I knew the engine would start melting down,
and I had to run along the shoulder and guys in big rigs
were thinking I was just trying to,
you know, cheat on the traffic jam
and they were trying to run me off the road.
But here's another one.
This is the kind of small radiator
that can give you a problem like I just described.
It's a 22 inch radiator,
it's got just a two row core,
so that's not very thick, so, it's not good enough.
This actually came out of Freiburger's old orange Duster,
which seems like half the parts around here
came out of that car, but he had a 360
that he swapped in there, and that car overheated miserably,
so, what I did is, I put a full 26 inch radiator in it
with a three row core and a really good mechanical fan
in that case, and it did the job, so,
always think about overengineering your cooling system,
and it will save you a lot of trouble,
and it might just save your motor,
and if you want to know more about cooling fans,
check out our show Engine Masters, Episode 20.
We go through all kinds of fans, check horsepower,
and see what kind of difference it makes.
That's a pretty cool show, you might like it.
Episode 20, Engine Masters.
(engine cranking, metal clanking)