Re: Spider radiator problems

[Jay Negrin <jmnegrin@domain.elided>]

replying to Scott Fisher wrote replied to me who replied to.......

I had a couple of problems when I ditched the hard driven fan with an
electric.  One was that the water temp went up with speed.  Backward of
everything we know, eh?  I never did find out that source of the
problem, but I have a feeling it was the fan itself, blocking the
radiator.  I did mount the fan in front of the radiator, so that may be
a factor.  the car I did this on is long gone, so it is hard to say,
really.  Did I not have the polarity right?  I dunno.  Like I said, lost
in the mists of time.

I decided not to hot-wire the fan, though.  Fuse it, of course.  My
thought was that if ANYTHING in the electrics, such as the thermostatic
switch, went haywire, I could have the fan on allatime.  And if you walk
away from it, thinking everything is OK, you would only find out that it
obviously wasn't when you found the dead battery, next time you needed
it.

> <snip>

> Oh, right: One other subtlety about mounting an electric fan is how
> you wire it.  I chose to wire it (with an inline fuse) to one of the
> "Servizi Vari" terminals on the fusebox, which are always hot, NOT to
> one of the terminals that are only energized when the key is on.  That
> way, as thermosiphon action moved heated coolant out of the head after
> I shut down, the fan would come on and help cool the contents of the
> radiator, which would sink, go through the lower hose, and enhance the
> thermosiphon action.  Again, because I lived in California when I did
> this, I reckoned that it was a good idea to continue the cooling
> process when the car was stopped (perhaps it was owning half a dozen
> German cars, all of which did this, that
> convinced me it was a Good Thing).

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