We took my sons `87 Mustang LX to the track Sat 19th for some t-n-t runs. He ran a best of 14.59 @ 95.63 mph. (his best yet) ... Then we removed the 6 blade aftermarket stainless steel flex fan (installed by the previous owner with no fan clutch) just to see how much difference an electric fan would make if we decided to install one in the place of the engine driven fan later. Result 14.35 @ 96.85 mph !
Make sure you put a manual cut off switch in with the fan. Otherwise, it might come on during a run and pump up the alternator drag. Thanks for the info! Fans are a drag... Dave Corny, but had to be said! Edit: Just worked out the numbers... That is equal to about 20 hp!!!
Yep, I know I can tell a ton of diffrence between diffrent kinds of fans on my 6 cyl. I'll put an electric fan on one of these days.
Wow that's cool. Hmmm.. maybe I'll have to head to the drag strip for the last Sunday test n tune next week... :evilsmile I considered leaving the fan off when I swapped alternators, now I wish I had (of course the stumble on the launch STILL would have kept me out of the 13's )
yep we did that with my friends car at the track too... it ran like two 10ths better each time. no one ever belives me
2 10ths is 20 rwhp... When first read this and figured it up, I was a little suspicious that maybe something else was different. Better driving, better traction, something. However if you saw the same results, and consistently, that is good news. M.A.V.: You say that the fan you took off was a flex fan? Or was it just a stiff aftermarket dress up fan? I know I went from stock hard fan, to a true flex fan, and the difference was very noticable (no numbers). My fan blades were aluminum too though. When you reved the engine, the fan blades instantly went flat. You could watch them, and they started going flat at a fairly low rpm. I know that some of the steel blade stuff is rigid and doesn't flex well, if at all. Let us know. Thanks Dave
Thanks Frank Dave the fan he has is a stainless one,and it does flatten out a bit when revved but I have seen some that flatten a lil more. Before the fan was removed he ran two 14.6 passes and one 14.7 with about the same cool down time between passes then we removed the fan ,he launched the same way as before (the a.o.d. shifts the same each time) and the car ran the 14.35. A buddy had suggested removing the fan because "they say it will drop around two tenth`s" so we decided to try it.
A couple of years ago one of the car magazines (I dont remember which one) had an engine on a dyno and checked a bunch of different fans. There was definately a difference.
This is the fan my sons mustang has ... [font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Ford Mustang 18" reverse Flex-A-Lite fan 302 5.0 79-93 [/font]
I'd rather have a clutch type fan with maybe an electric backup.A buddies true street mustang almost acheived meltdown during the drive when the new electric fan quit...in traffic.It got over 250 degrees,I'm guessing he's lucky the TFS aluminum heads didn't crack.I'll give up a few horses to have a conventional fan on a driver.JMO
