<VV> Electric fans - I don't think so.......

[corvairs]

               As someone fully emersed in the Corvair parts business 
for the past 33 years, I can tell you that if there is a viable, 
workable electric fan system on the market for street use I don't know 
about it. I DO know about some conversions that have been done, but they 
all are used in specialized applications and have serious shortcomings 
for regular street use. (Incidentally I consider a "street" car that 
uses an electric fan but will predictably overheat  under a few limited, 
but normal circumstances, to be a "specialized application").
                An electric fan that seems to work adequatly in a street 
car  99% of the time is not good enough. Because, if for no other reason 
(and there obviously are other reasons) just as with harmonic 
distortion, every time the engine is subjected to that 1% it gets 
severely heat damaged. An electric fan conversion that has so  far been 
used  in a street car  for 10,000 miles doesn't mean a lot either.
                 I have a very close friend in Corsa who was sold on, 
what is in my opinion, a quack modification to his engine. Lets just say 
he was told he could run regular gas. Well it worked a long time for 
some Corvair owners. At about 18,000 miles the engine failed horribly 
rendering what could only be described as a pile of badly heat damaged 
parts. Was this a "successful" application? I guess it all depends. I 
refer to an interesting vhs tape done by the Chicagoland Club that shows 
thier attempts one afternoon to "kill" a Corvair engine. The things that 
were done to this engine are amazing, including running it for extened 
periods of time with no fan belt and eventually no oil.
                  About 20 years ago we rebuilt a differential for a 
customer who hurridly put it in his car and drove to Phoenix, AZ (about 
1200+ miles from here). He called us  anout 90 miles from Phoenix 
screaming at us about our "defective" differential which had seized up. 
Baffled, I asked him what type of axle fluid he put in it. Well, he 
hadn't, he thought we had. Is a "modification" of running a differential 
without oil  and only assembly lube a "success" ? Well of course it is - 
at least for 1000 miles.
                   This is why experience and thorough pre-testing and 
data is so important. Anecdotal experience has it's place but it isn't 
enough - at least for some crittical modifications.       Lon

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