Coolant flow
But YOU are arguing. I drive my **** ON THE STREET. Just because YOU cant or won’t do something isn’t my problem.
Maybe you ought to drop your coolant temperature, retune your carb and ignition and then report back how shitty it runs. Or maybe how much better it runs. ON THE STREET.
Get the “racing” thing out of your head. That’s your mental road block.
I don’t think I’ve ever said for an EFI (junk you call “modern”) deal to drop the coolant temperature. If I have, it’s because of testing on STREET DRIVEN CARS close to two decades ago.
See, we've had this conversation before. But you seem to have forgotten that I originally set my car up to run colder. I ran it like that for awhile (literally years), and I ran several timing and carburation calibrations during that time. The problem was always the same, the car was a DOG when it was actually cold outside. It would sputter and spit, and lag on the throttle until it was all the way at the very top of the temperature range I was trying to maintain (below 190°). I had no issues maintaining the colder temperatures with my cooling set up at all. And the colder coolant temperatures did not allow me to run more overall timing, I run the same max overall timing now. When it was hot out the car did great.
I went around with timing and carburation, working different timing curves and even entirely different carburetors and distributors, changed out the mechanical flex fan I had been running for my current electric fan set up so I could better control the coolant temperature range. Then I did the logical thing- the car ran great at 190°, and like it was cold and still warming at 180° or below. So I raised the temperature on my electric fans cut in and cut out, because with the electric fan controller I run that takes 30 seconds and costs nothing. Car ran better, still had no overheating issues, and was all around easier to drive. And that was all the time, not just when it was cold out. So I went back into the timing and carburetor and with a little more tuning the car runs great.
Sorry, but your advice is completely rooted in your drag racing background. Drag racers are the
only ones that say running your car at 160° is best. And for the drag strip that's fine, for a max hp dyno pull that's fine, heck for a nice weekend afternoon cruise to the park that's fine. At 5am when it's 27° out for the morning commute it's just not what you want. Tried it, worked hard to make it work, discovered it was bad advice, moved on and tuned a better running car.
I
did do it your way. And I'm not going to claim my engine is tuned perfectly or even built perfectly for how I use it, I already know it isn't. But I do know that it runs and performs better tuned the way it is now then it ever did tuned to run cold like you say should be best.
Your street car and my circle track car are polar opposites when it comes to cooling system requirements. But for the sake of this discussion let's say that what they have in common is that they both have motors that make 400 horsepower. That is the point I was making in the post. Different applications require different cooling systems including fans.
You said your street car needs to move the most air at idle. The only time my circle track car is idling is when it is in the pit warming up for the race. If it's cool out I have to put cardboard in front of the radiator to even get the needle to come off the peg on the temp gauge. There is no load on the engine at idle so there is very little heat that is produced by the engine and the fan on my racecar even at idle speed is overkill. Is that fan inefficient at idle? Absolutely. But that big (overkill at idle) fan is going to have it's hands full when the car is at speed on the racetrack. Because it is under a heavy load the entire time it's on the race track with no break. Except for an occasional caution flag.
You said your car doesn't even need a fan above 25 mph . The air flow through the grill is sufficient to cool the car. That's because your car's engine has very little load on it to propel itself down the highway. My circle track car has air going through the grill too. It also has an air dam below the radiator to pick up even more air. And that's not anywhere close to enough air to keep the motor cool with out the additional air provided by the fan at 6000+ rpm. It wouldn't make it two laps without a fan and the gauge will be pegged. Due to the continuous high load on the engine.
I'm not saying one fan is better than the other, electric or mechanical. Each has their advantages. I'm saying different applications may require different types of fans.
Put a hitch on your car and hook a 10,000 pound trailer to it. There is a chance your.cooling system requirements might change. Different application, different cooling system requirements.
Right, which is exactly why I said your dirt track example was irrelevant for every other application and pretty much every car discussed on this board. Everything I said is true of my car, and for most cars on this board that see any amount of street time. Idle and low RPM is the challenging time to cool street cars, while anything at speed is typically managed without the fan as long as the radiator and water pump are working properly.
Electric fans work great on these cars. They work great on modern cars, heck an 807 hp Challenger Hellcat runs a single electric fan. But like anything, they have to be set up properly. If you want an electric fan to work properly for your application you have to make sure it's capable of pulling enough CFM, that your electric system can provide it continuously with the large amperage it will need to move that amount of air, and that you're controlling it in a way that can turn the fan on/off reliably when it needs to be. There are a lot of really expensive aftermarket electric fans out there that don't move half the air that's required for most applications with these cars.
I'm just tired of all the guys here that say electric fans are junk and they don't work. They're like anything else. Set them up wrong and they won't work. You can't just slap one on, run a couple of 14 gauge wires to it with a 70 amp alternator and expect success. Pretty much every case I've read on this board where someone says their electric fan set up didn't work was the install. Too small a fan, not enough amperage, undersized wiring, cheesy switching, etc.
