<VV> cooling fan results - Tony

[Tony Underwood]

At 12:07 PM 8/3/2007, Chris & Bill Strickland wrote:
>Tony wrote:
>
>>But then there's no engine heat control and no heater in 
>>winter...  no big deal for a race car, or me and the '60 though.
>Tony --
>
>Since running without the lower shrouds is akin to running without 
>thermostats, did you ever run your 60 without the fan "ring"?  If 
>so, what was the result?



I "unhooked" the thermostat to allow the fan ring to be tied up out 
of the way to allow max airflow.    It helped but on those hill 
climbs in the summer afternoon it would still overheat...  on a few 
such occasions I'd stop once I got to the top, where I was 
headed...  and if I needed to go somewhere else anytime within ten 
minutes or so the car wouldn't wanna start again, with the 
"rurrh---rurrh" cranking as if the timing was advanced too far... 
although it was on the money.   I did find out once that if I went 
inside and got a couple milk jugs of water and poured a gallon or two 
on the heads around the carb mount pads, the engine would then 
usually crank up normally... after the steam clouds dispersed.


One time, after climbing the long curvy stretch of Bandy Road here in 
town (which I have to do just about every day) on a hot weekend 
afternoon, I had to stop suddenly for an SUV that pulled out in front 
of me at the intersection just before the last set of "S" curves, the 
'Vair shuddering as the engine was hot and barely keeping an idle 
speed, and when I tried to proceed the engine shuddered more and just 
quit with a preignition sort of rattling ping.   I tried to restart, 
and all I got was the strained "rurrh--- rurrh" again... and the 
battery was in good shape, type-51 only 6 months old.   It left me 
sitting in the middle of the 2nd set of uphill "S" curves on Bandy 
Rd, perfect place to cause an accident if someone coming up behind me 
tried to pass and got center-punched by traffic coming down the road 
in the oncoming lane, around the blind-side curve.

I managed to get back down as far off the road as I could, which 
wasn't very far seeing as how there's no shoulder, just a drop-off 
down into the woods...  had to sit there about 15 minutes before the 
engine would cool off enough to crank like it should, so as to not 
drain the battery with the starter fighting the hot engine.   I 
caught a lot of nasty looks from other drivers as they maneuvered 
their way around me through the last uphill S-curve... staring at my 
'60 4-door blocking the road, in all its "Appaloosa" style primer 
spotted glory.

That's part of the reason that there's a mag fan on the car now... no 
more overheating issues, at least not anything that's bad enough to 
cause it to overheat on Bandy Rd in August's 98 degree 
sunshine...  like today.   Might not look stock on the engine 
(neither is the air cleaner, late model style) but it works and it 
doesn't shed belts.

The irritating part of it is that the uphill stretch of Bandy Rd that 
I have to deal with is only a couple of miles long, with twists and 
turns etc and between the time I'd start uphill at the bottom where 
it runs off the main highway to the top of the plateau where it 
levels off, the car would overheat bigtime in hot weather, and even 
in cooler weather it would be pinging and rattling as I'd round the 
last S-curve at the top of the hill.

In any event, even though the mag fan is inefficient, it still works 
better than the '60 cooling fan.   I'm not at all surprised that GM 
dumped that first-gen fan pretty quickly.   By the way, the Lakewood 
did it too, overheat, same sort of fan... for now.  It's gonna get 
changed as well, when I get around to it.

I hate that friggin' hill climb.

...and at night you can almost *Depend* on somebody coming down the 
hill around those blind curves hitting you in the face with their 
hi-beams so you can't see diddly, usually an SUV which aims those 
halogens right at your eyes.

...hate that hill.



tony..