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Taurus Electric Fan Install on 91 EX

raiper

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City, State
Lodi, CA
Year, Model & Trim Level
90 BII 4.0 Conversion
96 Taurus Electric Fan Install on 91 Explorer MOD

Well Heres one of the two write ups i have chosen to do. Sorry about the Rear hitch write up, just too hot right now and bumper is a pain to get on at the moment. So now on to the good stuff.
Now Ive heard and been told that you couldnt put one of the Taurus 2 speed fans into an Explorer due to the clearance issue. Well i am here to prove them wrong. On the other side i didnt want to spend the 150 or so on a flex- a-lite fan. Dont get me wrong i dont have anything against them except the fact that im strapped on cash. This can be done for 90 or less.With some hope and good luck one night i managed to do it.

!!WARNING!!: YOU WILL HAVE TO CUT OFF THE THREADING ON YOUR WATER PUMP RENDERING IT USELESS IF YOU EVER DECIDE TO PUT YOUR CLUTCH FAN BACK IN!

All needed Pictures can be found here . Sorry guys for the inconvience.
Items needed:
1. Need to go to the pick and pull or someother junkyard and a 2 speed electric fan from the Taurus. To make sure its a 2 speed fan . To do this trace down the fan connector and you should find three wires. One solid and two striped. Pick-n-Pull its 33ish and on their half off sale its 20

2. 8 guage wire is a must it uses i believe 10, but it draws 80 amps on startup so i went with 8 for a lil more protection. Dont forget the eye hole connectors as well youll need for of them. Got the wire for 49 cents a foot. 5 bucks total and connectors costed 1.29 for all 4

3. 80 amp heavy duty continous relay. if you live in the stockton area or anywhere near Ripon give B & Z auto a visit and they have it for 27.99

4. Your preference of toggle switch

The prep work:

*Take out your exsisting clutch fan and shroud and burn it all to hell. j/k keep it just for spare parts, cause you never know when you might need something like a fan.

*Take out your radiator and even if you try to contain all the coolant in the block after you take it out just dont try or you can try to do it with it in.

*Now with that done you will see you gained more room to work in now for the next step. Take a Grinder with a cutting disk if you have one or if you dont like i did and have a regular grinding disk use that to chop off the nut thread on the pump. Using a regular disk grind it flush with the pulley and let it cool.
ALSO VERY IMPORTANT! leave the belt on and take out all but one of the pulley bolts when cutting and DON'T forget you left one on and cut it off by accident.
SEE IMAGE(S): WATER PUMP VIEW 3

INSTALL

*Now comes the tricky part here....the "clearance" issue. Now you should have gained about a inch in space but that alone is still not enough to clear. Put the radiator back in and bolt it up and the hoses as well. Take the fan and gently put against the radiator and the pulley. Youll notice the hump is in the way on the back of the fan and that you need a lot more clearance as well. theres 2 ways to gain that needed clearance and you have to do both. SEE IMAGE(S):
A: Grind down the hump on the back of the fan and cut the vents it has going around it with the cutting wheel. Just cut the vents to where it is level with the casingSEE IMAGE(S): Now flip it over and grind off some of the stud with the clip holding the fan on. Grind off a little, but no too much and thats to give you a little more clearance and flex with the fan when running. SEE IMAGE(S):
B: Get a dremel or other cutting device although dremel works best and shave the fan shroud to gain the extra clearance. SEE IMAGE(S): Dont worry it does not affect its cooling at all. During this you might experience yourself putting it in and takeing it out several times to get it right. When you get it right it should fit between all four bolts on the water pump and not rub as this will be its final resting place. 19.5'Lx16'W is the final dimensionsSEE IMAGE(S): Final Clearance

IMPORTANT: Pay attention to the clip on the front of the fan! Make sure there is ample space roughly around a 1/4 if you have more thats good. Or you will put a hole in it like I did, but the sealer stuff you put in fixed it
Mount the fan to the bottom and top or radiator. Use washers to space it between the fan shroud and radiator. SEE IMAGE(S): To find out if it rubs or not take the belt off and spin the water pump pulley. Although you might find out you have to fine tune the mounting position or cut some more off.

*After that is all in wire the fan up using the high speed wire thorugh the relay, which could vary color by year so i didnt post it.

Check your fluids, hop in and take a drive. You should notice a power increase and gas mileage increase. I used to get around 12-to the high 13's but now i get mid 14's-low15 average. Ive towed, wheeled, idled in traffic in 100+ temp, pulled and it keeps the engine cooler than my clutch fan did.
 



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I am not going to use the taurus fan on my explorer, but I am thinking about it for another project. Would you mind doing me a huge favor and measure the OD of the ring the fan rides in?

Thanks in advance. I am guessing from pics its around 14" or so.

Brian
 






Ya i could just gotta dig it up here somewhere. Right now im using a Dual 10 inch fan setup that i got from a ford focus. Dont have to do much to make that one fit. Run atleast 10guage wire and no bigger than 8 with a heavy duty relay. I have an 85 HD continious relay on mine i believe. The focus fan is smaller, leaves more room between pump and fan so you dont have to cut of the stud to your water pump, and draws a whole lot less amps than the 80+ amp taurus fan. Maybe around 30 with both fans on high. If you got anymore questions i could help ya out. Just finished the focus fan setup in my 4.0 BII today.
 






thanks for the info I am going to give it a shot!
 






What can this fan take off-road, Mud dirt, dust, water, snow, Ice? Will it hold up under all of the things that I put my X into?
 






:rolleyes: Isent a luch fan better? i have never heard of cluch fans giving problems wille on the other hand everyonbe i know with a elkectric fan always have electrical problems relays etc... like my daewoo lanos if i dont put the air on even tho the air dont work the fan turns off randomlly .. and other issues on friends cars and yet evryone i know with a cluch fan never had a problem...
 






Ford isn't known for good clutch fans. I've had issues with the clutch fans on both my 91 (off roader) and 93 (wife's dd) ex's also we recently bought 2 '08 ford f150's and at less than 20k miles had a clutch fan shred on us and take out part of the main wire harness! as we are often far far from home (i run a pilot car service) this of course happened no where near a shop and i was stuck in Shelby Montana for a week, we are now converting the 08's to eletric fans to prevent this problem again
 






Old thread I know. But the link to the pictures isnt working for me. Any chance you still had the pictres of the install raiper
 






Ha ya its an waay old thread......no i dont sorry i scrapped the taurus fan a long time ago, just got tired of the high amp draw. I found that a electric fan from a 97 ford escort works pretty well and you dont have to cut any of the fan shroud and can install it onto your vehicle with 2 packs of 4 radiator zip ties you use to hold a tranny cooler on your rad. they are about 6 bucks for a pack. You still have to use a heavy duty continuous relay that you can get from oriley, autozone or whatever but gonna have to look in the parts books for it. Escort fan has HI/LO but i run it on HI all the time. You just have to mount fan longways....rotate it so the long sides are going up and down on the radiator. You shouldnt have to grind down the stump on your water pump with this fan as well
 






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