Changing to electric cooling fan

[cferrer56]

2003 XLT w/6cyl flexfuel Can the clutch fan be replaced with an electric fan? Does the wiring harness have the connections for this? Any help?

 

[dgr6853]

You may have the AUXFan which is a small fan between the radiator and the fan shroud. From my understanding it gets turned on when the engine temp hits 220 and then turns off at 210.<--that's where my Aviators fan came on and off. However, that fan is always running when I turn on the air. I used that plugins from that fan to trigger a relay wiring harness because the MK8 fan that I used draws entirely to much power for that harness that was designed to use the auxiliary fan that I have heard referred to as the HD kit for towing. Not all explorers have this fan. If you don't have that fan in place then you need to get a wiring harness with a trigger that's based off of coolant temp.

Some fan wiring harness kits just come with a preset temp that's not adjustable and some are adjustable for the temperature triggers.

 

[TechGuru]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Mine only has a engine driven fan and my a/c stays cold in traffic in the 100+ Texas heat. If you're having a cooling problem you probably just need a new fan clutch.

Adding a aux fan to the front of the condenser can always improve cooling but I would not remove the factory engine driven fan. I would just tap into the a/c clutch wire for a relay trigger for a aux fan.

 

[imp]

@cferrer56 @TechGuru
Tech is right on the money. After 60 years of flogging cooling systems, cross-flow vs. vertical flow, stock fan, flex fan, clutch fan, NO fan, all Prestone, NO Prestone, Hi-temp thermostat, lo-temp stat, pressurized catch bottle, I've seen, tried, messed with every possible combination.

Electric fans are in reality no damned good in many respects. First most significant drawback is that ALL fan controllers operate through a "differential temperature" range, which means they might turn the fan ON at 200 degrees, but stay on until 180 degrees is reached. This means the cooling system pressure is being cycled up and down during each fan ON-OFF cycle. So what? Repeated coolant pressure variation adds stress to sealing media, most pointedly, head gaskets and water pump seals. Yeah, it's a moot point, but still it's there. My newly-acquired '94 Mustang GT 5.0L, first year with electric fan, shoves the gauge up and down almost alarmingly, all the time. I hate it, when comparing it to my Explorer with fan clutch which keeps eng. temp. so constant the gauge needle NEVER moves more than a hair, no matter the outside temp., AC on, or off, winter or summer.

If cooling problems arise with a factory-delivered system, IMO it's better to go looking for the cause, rather than "masking" some existing problem by installing after-market bally-hooed fixes. imp

 

[boominXplorer]

Unless you are highly inclined on 12v electrical then just keep the factory clutch fan. Just like imp I have tried every setup out there. I am running a dual electric fan with a pulse width mod controller I made giving me 4 speeds to choose from. BUUUUUT I am still tweeking it to work right after I installed it 2 years ago. It works great when it works but every once awhile when it's really hot the speed will surge and I loose cooling power. Like we've all said, electric fans are nothing but problems most of the time.

 

[lincolnshibuya]

what I did on my Jeep was to add a clutch fan because the e-fan is not reliable (it uses a solid state relay that could burn) Nice to have both e-fan and clutch fan in case one of them fails you're truck will still be in good shape.. it caused my radiator to split last time when that relay burned.. in case you want to add the e-fan make sure you're alternator could handle the added load and e-fans are power hungry devices..