67 Dart 270...Project Old School
I have basically been tweaking on the car over the past few weeks. One project I tackled (again) was mounting an electric fan. Last time I used a 2400 CFM fan, this time I went with 4400 CFM fan off a Taurus 3.8L car. This ended up becoming a very involved project because the fan/shroud would not fit between the radiator and water pump pulley.
The first thing I did was trim down the fan to get it as thin as possible. This required a lot of trial and error with me having to glue back in sections and re-trim to make sure it would sit flat on the radiator. It still didn't quite fit between the radiator and water pump pulley when I test fit it. I then figured out how to sink the radiator into the radiator support. This actually turned out to be pretty easy. You slot the radiator support so you can have the radiator mounting brackets on the outside of the radiator support. Test fit showed it wasn't going to be enough. The fan motor was hitting on the water pump pulley. The solution: move the radiator to the driver's side about an inch. This provided the required space so the water pump did not interfere with the fan motor.
This created a new problem because I had previously moved the battery down to the frame rail on the driver's side. The battery tray and battery no longer fit between the radiator and inner fender. Solution: Use a smaller battery. I used a battery for Honda Civic that is only 5 inches wide. I built a custom battery tray for it out of sheet metal and painted it with hammer tone black paint.
I used a soft start fan controller that starts the fan at 60% fan speed at your set temperature. The controller ramps the fan speed up to 100% when the temperature reaches 10 degrees over your set temperature. The controller also runs the fans for 30 seconds after you shut the car off. This feature turned out to be pretty handy in the staging lanes to cool the car off.
On the performance front, I swapped in the lightest secondary spring Holley makes for the 3310. I was originally afraid the white spring would cause the car to bog, but the 3.91 gear and the 3200 stall convert kept this from being an issue.
I headed to the Wednesday night test and tune on Sept. 3, 2014 to see if there was any performance improvement. Right off the bat, I was rewarded with a 13.09. I then got two backup passes of 13.02 and 13.01. That was too close to the 12s to not try to squeak in. I removed the spare tire, jack, jumper cables, and tool bag from the trunk for about 85 lbs of weight reduction. Back at the starting line I got too eager and due to the weight being removed from over the rear wheels the car spun which resulted in a 13.22. I snuck into the back of the staging lanes and got one more pass where I did manage to ease the car off the line and hit my shifts. The result:
I have basically been tweaking on the car over the past few weeks. One project I tackled (again) was mounting an electric fan. Last time I used a 2400 CFM fan, this time I went with 4400 CFM fan off a Taurus 3.8L car. This ended up becoming a very involved project because the fan/shroud would not fit between the radiator and water pump pulley.
The first thing I did was trim down the fan to get it as thin as possible. This required a lot of trial and error with me having to glue back in sections and re-trim to make sure it would sit flat on the radiator. It still didn't quite fit between the radiator and water pump pulley when I test fit it. I then figured out how to sink the radiator into the radiator support. This actually turned out to be pretty easy. You slot the radiator support so you can have the radiator mounting brackets on the outside of the radiator support. Test fit showed it wasn't going to be enough. The fan motor was hitting on the water pump pulley. The solution: move the radiator to the driver's side about an inch. This provided the required space so the water pump did not interfere with the fan motor.
This created a new problem because I had previously moved the battery down to the frame rail on the driver's side. The battery tray and battery no longer fit between the radiator and inner fender. Solution: Use a smaller battery. I used a battery for Honda Civic that is only 5 inches wide. I built a custom battery tray for it out of sheet metal and painted it with hammer tone black paint.
I used a soft start fan controller that starts the fan at 60% fan speed at your set temperature. The controller ramps the fan speed up to 100% when the temperature reaches 10 degrees over your set temperature. The controller also runs the fans for 30 seconds after you shut the car off. This feature turned out to be pretty handy in the staging lanes to cool the car off.
On the performance front, I swapped in the lightest secondary spring Holley makes for the 3310. I was originally afraid the white spring would cause the car to bog, but the 3.91 gear and the 3200 stall convert kept this from being an issue.
I headed to the Wednesday night test and tune on Sept. 3, 2014 to see if there was any performance improvement. Right off the bat, I was rewarded with a 13.09. I then got two backup passes of 13.02 and 13.01. That was too close to the 12s to not try to squeak in. I removed the spare tire, jack, jumper cables, and tool bag from the trunk for about 85 lbs of weight reduction. Back at the starting line I got too eager and due to the weight being removed from over the rear wheels the car spun which resulted in a 13.22. I snuck into the back of the staging lanes and got one more pass where I did manage to ease the car off the line and hit my shifts. The result: