Electric cooling fan mounting (pins)

[Mick]

Have any of you used the through radiator type pins to secure an electric fan?

I'm about to install a Spal electric fan and it came with pins. They'd certainly make it a quick and easy install, but I don't trust them. It seems like over time they would damage the radiator. I plan on fabricating some brackets instead. I was just wondering if anyone here has had any experience with them. (good or bad)

Image of pins
http://images.auctionworks.com/hi/61/60 ... c09351.jpg
Technical drawing
http://www.jaycorptech.com/images/product/large/32.jpg

I plan on making brackets like this instead.
http://www.s14.net/photopost/data/500/4 ... cket_1.jpg

[jlwhorf]

Mick

I recently bought a spal fan and the came with the mounts in the below link.
http://spalusa.com/fans/automated/acces ... 30011.html
I have a racing radiator that has bolt holes on the top an bottom of the radator and they worked well.

Jonathan
900 Monte Carlo PA

[jadams]

I have used those type of pins on oil coolers in the past an not had any problems with them. Of course if you were worried about it, the mount that you proposed appears to be a much more robust design. It all depends on how much those mounting pins bother you. If you can make up those other brackets pretty easily, I would probably do that. At a minimum it looks cooler!

[irondragon]

Re: Cooling fan mounting pins-
They will work well if securely tightened, and if not subjected to a lot of translational shock loads. (Keep the car on the track!).
I have found better results by welding a pair of steel flat bars (1x 1/8") across the radiator frame and bolting the fan to this array. This puts no load on the radiator tube structure- as does the mounting pin system.
It all depends on how you load the structure - a lot of off track excursions will cause the mounting pins to do bad stuff to the rad tubes which are really only there to cool water.
Best Regards -Bill Miskoe

[brucesallen]

8 years on my Lotary 7 with no problems and I don't always keep it on track.

[Mick]

Thanks for the feedback.

Bill, that's what I was concerned about. I thought that over time the tubes on the radiator could bend an loosen. Then if the fan bounced around it would pinch a tube off or cause a leak. I guess it would also depend on the mass of the fan. I got the lightest one available in my size, 14" @ 2.9 lbs.

Bruce, It's good to hear yours has been reliable. Maybe I'm just overthinking the issue. What size fan are you running?

Thanks

[JackFFR1846]

Look carefully at the fan and your mounting surface or whatever is next to the fan. In Factory Five Cobras, the spal fans were thought to be defective, when in fact, the mounting method put metal mounting straps between the radiator and the fan and when spinning and bottoming out on something like a pothole, a fan blade would contact the strap, breaking it off. I have 3 fans like that....with 2 or 4 blades (opposite side one broken off on purpose) in my garage. Putting a 1/2 inch spacer solved my issue.

In a track only car, you don't need a ton of cooling. My CRX racecar's fan is hanging in my garage.

jack