Wondering if this will help with the getting stuck in traffic on a flathead roadster with no room for a fan. It has a 4" copper core radiator in a chopped 32 shell. Moving at all the temp is fine but get stuck in constuction or something and you're screwed. Hard to find a pic of a 40's 50's rod with a fan on it but much less traffic then I guess. This squirrel cage was off a '51 Nash. Standing still it seems to transfer quite a bit of heat off the core. If the weather would change here or I could get my shop up to about 80 deg I could tell if it works or not.
i dunno man, im doubtful doesnt seem like it would help a whole lot. not pleasing to the eye either if that matters, i feel ya on your problem i had trouble with my 49 merc overheating in traffic so i did a 1000cfm electric pusher fan to help out but i had a hood and grille to hide it all. does it have a shroud they help alot too. good luck
Bobby Green did a cool one a couple years back, he goes by his name Bobby Green, just go through his posts and you should find it. I think it was a tech? And was trying to make his electric fan look traditional or at Least kind of hide it...
here is bobby green's post. Not a bad solution to hide that ugly fan. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162030
The better question is why can't you fit a fan? From the looks of it you couldn't even fit an electric puller there, let alone a mechanical fan. That contraption you have rigged up with do absolutely nothing, I promise. I had a similar issue years ago when the 383 was first put in my car. No room for a fan. The real issue, poor planning and no mock up on the part of an inexperienced 18 year old kid doing his first engine swap. The solution: pull the motor out and start over. Sure it ****ed to drop another grand and spend a winter custom fabbing a new oiling system and exhaust, but the work has paid off with years of trouble free operation.
Un-fortunatly I doubt that will do you much good. You need to pull air through the Core, not just move it around in the motor compartment. Now maybe if your real creative and were to build a Shroud with 2 of those fans pulling air through you might get on top of the problem. Personally I think you need to go back to the drawing board and either move the Rad/Grill forward and mount a Fan or move the motor back for more room. The Wizzard
Thats good! Thanks. I missed that thread. I could live with a temporary one that looked like that in front of the grill as a pusher for the 1/2 hour or so a season that it needs the fan. OB
That squirrel cage might help pull hot air OUT of the compartment. Since you are running hood and sides I would rig it up and pull the hot air DOWN and AWAY from the engine. Or do what the bracket racers do and aim the flow at the engine ****ing from a cooler source. Borrow a temp gun and do some real world tests.
I wonder if you'd be better off going with a thinner radiator, and then gaining the room that way to run a fan and a shroud. A four or five blade fan with a shroud, plus Water Wetter and a thermostat that opens a little sooner would be a huge improvement. -Brad
Do you have objections to running a fan in front of the radiator? Your custom setup may not have much space between the rad core and the grill but there are some really thin fan designs out there that might work well. Perma-Cool sells electric fans that are all metal, look fairly agro and may be thin enough--14" version is 3.75" thick. It can be a pusher or puller so front mounting is not a prob. The blades could be painted or anodized black so it would nearly disappear behind your grill. They push more than enough air for your purposes and from my limited experience with them they are very reliable. You don't need to have an electric thermostat setup either--just a switch that you can flip on when in traffic. Here's a Summit link: http://store.summitracing.com/partd...9114&N=700+400006+4294838842+115&autoview=sku
What you have now is taking hot underhood air and pushing it backwards through the radiator, but not very well. When the car is moving the fan flows the wrong way, and reduces normal flow through the core. For that fan to work, the axial opening (big round hole on top) has to be ducted or shrouded to the core with no air leaks, and the radial exit (small "nose") dumps hot air under the car. If you're a good fabricator you can cover the entire inside face of the core with a shroud ending in a 4" duct, with an electric fan inside - but the fan must be huge because you won't have normal air circ through the core from vehicle speed.
Thanks for all the help. I didn't add any details of why or what I was doing because I was just curious if any one had done it. With the inline 6 & '28 Ford side panels there is no more room unless I drive from the trunk. The only time I need it operating is if I'm stuck in stopped traffic I can't get out off for a time. If this doesn't work I think I will build one like Old Crow's and just hang it on the light bar if I get in a situation I need it . His has a real nice look for an electric fan.
Have you tried finding a vacuum advance distributor? I had traffic overheating issues until I replaced the mechanical advance with a vacuum. Turns out, the Mechanical dizzy could not retard the timing enough.
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