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My jeep has the flowkooler pump, BJs crossflow radiator (old style) and the BJs electric fan & shroud.

I have played with the timing, thermostats, put spacers under rear hood hinges you name it. Still gets hot when cruising (210-220) lower t-stats just prolong the inevitable.

I think the fan is undersized for my application and fitment was sacrificed for performance.

They use a derale 18217 fan which is 2400cfm listed. Not much clearance between the water pump and the radiator, maybe 3"?

Unless my eyes are going bad it appears the crossflow radiator has a smaller core than a stock jeep radiator though which has me concerned.

I'm measuring around 19x19 for the core dimensions which won't allow me to upgrade to a contour. So my plan is to hack apart a taurus or volvo and try to make that work? Is anybody using the BJs radiator with fan and having issues? I see the price on the radiator shot up to $500.
Stock core dimensions are 15-7/8 x 25-7/8 x 1-7/8 from RockAuto.

I'm not willing to spend $175 for a mechanical fan shroud. I may end up moving the radiator forward to make something work for a fan, the one supplied just seems light duty.

The Contour fan set up is crap. Don't even bother. Don't know what the Taurus fans will do, other than slice your fingers pretty well.

I had put a mechanical fan back on my Cherokee after I had overheating issues with the Contour setup. Made my own fan shroud. No more overheating issues. Even runs cooler in town. I am running a two core aluminum/plastic replacement radiator also. The mechanical fan pulls more air when the clutch is "disengaged" than the Contour fans ever did.

If you can do it, put a mechanical fan back on. will save you money and grief.


...and check your thermostat to make sure it's opening.

Yeah mechanical fans are just plain better if you have a good fan clutch and good shroud.

I was having overheating issues on my GMC truck with 8.1L vortec with an expensive racing radiator with twin electric fans. Problem solved with a stock radiator, stock shroud and mechanical fan.

x3

Do you have a v8 with a 6cyl front clip? The v8 radiator is a touch wider and it sits deeper in the core support. I converted a 6cyl truck to v8 and had over heating issues with the 6 radiator and electric fans. I switched to a v8 core support and radiator with mechanical clutch fan and overheating went away.

It's a V8 core support. Unsure what radiator is in it, the PO installed this radiator so who knows....

I'm not giving up on the e-fan yet. I've ruined too many good radiators from the mechanical fan hitting the radiator. Those were mostly rust bucket trucks though so who knows.

So you know the consensus is that electric fans suck (or don't suck enough, depending on your perspective) but you're determined to run one anyways? That's ok, I run electric fans too.

Granted, I'm running them on a 304, but it works.

In days past, the fans to have we're junkyard fans off a Ford Taurus, but I don't know the year/trim to look for. That should get you started on a Google search though.

Mine are massive flow (1800 I think?)16" Haydens, one pusher, one puller, offset. Manual trans and no AC, so all they do is cool the engine. Sometimes in the desert they're barely enough.

You may want to consider having your raidator flushed out too if you have a radiator shop around. I had cherokee that had a "new" radiator installed by the PO. Had all sorts of over heating problems. The guys at the rad shop said it was full of crap. This was of course after I replaced everything else in the cooling system. Added a hd fan clutch too and it never overheated again after that.

I have been running efans on the past two FSJ's without any problems. But both have been GM engines so maybe not comparable. I am running a taurus fan on my LS swap now and it works great even towing my 5000lb camper it has never hit high speed. We don't have the kind of hills you guys out west do though.

I personally find it kind of amazing that a lot of people will throw money at Efans before getting the radiator flushed by a pro. If you are still running an AMC motor, the mechanical fan and clutch is more than adequate if you have a fan shroud and clean radiator. Just saying...

REDONE wrote:So you know the consensus is that electric fans suck (or don't suck enough, depending on your perspective) but you're determined to run one anyways? That's ok, I run electric fans too.

Granted, I'm running them on a 304, but it works.

In days past, the fans to have we're junkyard fans off a Ford Taurus, but I don't know the year/trim to look for. That should get you started on a Google search though.

Mine are massive flow (1800 I think?)16" Haydens, one pusher, one puller, offset. Manual trans and no AC, so all they do is cool the engine. Sometimes in the desert they're barely enough.

90-95 is the model year for the Taurus fans. Be sure to get one from a V6 model. Supposedly 2,500 CFM on low, 4,500 on high. I have one installed on the truck. It does move quite a bit of air and the built in shroud covers just about all of the radiator so it's drawing that air over most of the surface like it needs to. It has no trouble keeping my .030 over 401 cool so far. But I don't have too many miles on it yet. The ~40-50 highway miles I have on it the thermostat stayed under 220.

The biggest issue I've seen with fans is the shrouding. If you're not ducting air across the whole radiator via a shroud, the fan won't be very effective. Doesn't matter if it's mechanical or electric. The more surface of the radiator you can get air across, the more effective the radiator is.

Of course, making sure you have a good clean radiator and coolant will solve a lot of problems.

csuengr wrote:The Contour fan set up is crap.

Huh, idk what I'm doing on my big block then with the contour fans and a FSJ radiator. Works great, in 100* heat in North Carolina last year fans would come on and off, didn't even struggle.

To each their own I suppose.

WT91 wrote:

csuengr wrote:The Contour fan set up is crap.

Huh, idk what I'm doing on my big block then with the contour fans and a FSJ radiator. Works great, in 100* heat in North Carolina last year fans would come on and off, didn't even struggle.

To each their own I suppose.

When was the last time you pulled a 4000 lb trailer over a 12,000+ ft pass?

A CORRECT electric fan is superior to a mechanical in most cases (The only real exception is with high output diesels that are pulling air through the intercooler, AC, and radiator). BUT, most "after market" electric fans are junk and do not pull anywhere close to what they are rated for. Thats why its typically better to go find an OEM fan from the junk yard. As these tend to be very high quality and pull enough air to cool a modern engine that displaces more heat for their displacement than our older engines.

Bought an xj with aftermarket fans. Overheated anytime it hit 100+. Yanked two of them and put a napa fan clutch and stock fan and shroud back on, much better. Lost some mileage, but the alternator is happier and the temps lower.

Aftermarket efans are a joke. They will tell you they pull X CFM. They don't tell you that is without a radiator in front of them. With a radiator you are lucky if they pull half of what they say.

I've tried electric fans on two different 4x4 trucks and had to go back to the mechanical fans. However, I do like a large Pusher fan to assist with low speed cooling. The pusher helps with low speed transmission and AC cooling. I always run a divorced trans' cooler,

Pull a junkyard fan off of a 2003 Volvo product. They run the same big 2 speed motor found on the Taurus/Thunderbird but have a small protection screen around them and that's it. It makes it way easy to build your own shroud and just bolt the fan assembly to it. I'm running a 5.3 with a stock brass/copper radiator and don't have any trouble. There are articles out there on how to pull the volvo fan control module and use it as well. Good luck.

resurrecting the advantage of the mechanical fan for those who have doubts.

From the GC site, these guys are doing the opposite, removing the Efans and putting mechanical fans, on either the 4.0 or the 4.7 for the 1999-2004 years, the Efans will fail,and the overheating on the V8 4.7 is more likely to drop the valve seat

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f310/wj- ... e-4089937/

some quotes in case their site goes down, use at your own risk, parts may not work on our beast because it is a single nut mount

yes the ford blade is the same setup as the GM blade, for the 4.0 the e-fan can stay in without interference.
hard to see but it is in there

4.0 19" GM blade although you can use the ranger blade in it, but bigger is better....lol

the V8 4.7
4.7 18" ranger blade
The clutch is a HAYDEN 2794, or equivalent . The fan is a Doorman 620-155 or equivalent. I got both off EBay for a total of $70.00 The clutch is here. The fan should be on Monday.

I had the smaller brother of the 4.7 in my wife's Liberty. It overheated and, sure enough, started dropping valve seats. Crap engines IMHO.

I run a mechanical in the Jeep. It does warm up a bit in traffic and on the trails if we are moving along too slow. But I blame the poor shroud design only made worse by me having to modify it to fit an aftermarket radiator.

At speed it stays cool all day. And I think that's the problem some folks have with aftermarket electric fans. Often times the shroud design is rather shallow and the opening is limited to the fan(s). So at speed I think it actually ends up blocking air flow. But again, just my opinion.

I installed A/C in a 2010 Wrangler last year and wired into the factory electric fan and was really impressed with the airflow matter of fact it was so good that the fan pressure switch i installed was going nuts turning the fan on and off rapidly , finally disconnected the oem fan from the a/c and added a smaller fan in front of the condenser that would push less air and didn't make so much noise cycling on/off

sonoraed wrote:I installed A/C in a 2010 Wrangler last year and wired into the factory electric fan and was really impressed with the airflow matter of fact it was so good that the fan pressure switch i installed was going nuts turning the fan on and off rapidly , finally disconnected the oem fan from the a/c and added a smaller fan in front of the condenser that would push less air and didn't make so much noise cycling on/off

The electric fans in the newer vehicles are a crap load better than what you can buy aftermarket.