taken19

Hey guys,

I now have a 2001 C5Z track only car and would like to swap to a single Spal 16" fan in place of the stock shroud. I've done a bit of searching, but the info is not all in one place that I can immediately find. Please post up what you guys have down with part numbers, websites (I heard that there are some used NASCAR websites that sell these but I can't find any), connector type and part numbers, wire gage, any type of zip tie you used (metal or plastic).

Thanks in advance for any info.

Sean

RX-Ben

Ditch the OEM shroud and fans.
Get a big cheap fan and mount it w/plastic radiator zip ties.
Check your PM.

taken19

Alright Ben, I trust you. Sent you a return PM.

trackboss

moespeeds

Hey trackboss where'd you get that fan? I'm assuming you got it hooked up to a switch inside the car? Ben whatever info you got, post it up here. I've got the car apart waiting on a short block and I'm itching for projects to keep me busy in the meantime!

pewter99

I don't track my car but I have the Dewitts SPAL setup....those bitches move some air

trackboss

http://the-fan-man.com/

I wired my fan using the factory wiring. Made a special connector to attach the the one no longer used. Removed the "high speed" relay that is no longer needed. Everything works just like stock, but performance is improved.

One thing I like about the way I mounted it is that it does not use any of the crappy brackets that are usually associated with mounting these types of fans. I hammerformed a pair of "S" shaped brackets and welded them to the radiator. The fan has flat spots on 4 sides. I used two of those for the brackets to line up to. A third one butts up against the edge of the core/tank. Installed threaded inserts in the fan housing 180* apart (top/bottom) and two 1/4' screws hold the fan on. Very simple to remove/install. Lightweight, and solid. Plus, no bracketry to obstruct air flow.

moespeeds

I'd love to see any pictures you have of that setup. Did you lay the radiator forward? If you lay it forward, do you need to use hood pins or can you keep the stock hinges? The fan pulls, correct?

Thanks again

Supercharged111

Sub'd. I'm a cheapass though, will add this to the stock radiator before I upgrade that.

RX-Ben

Flex a Lite 118 puller.
2500cfm = no need for a shroud (so better cooling at speed) and a bit lighter than the stock setup.
Hook it up to the low speed fan connector -- so the computer will always turn this fan on (assuming the temp and mph parameters are met), whereas the high speed fan only gets turned on when the computer decides the low speed fan is not doing an adequate job.

Supercharged111

Pics? This is the whole appeal to this swap and I believe why the OP is interested in doing this.

RX-Ben

You just take off the stock fan n shroud setup and put it on (behind the rad, of course) w/radiator zip ties. There isn't a lot to see.

Supercharged111

Oh. I've had bad luck with those zip ties in the past, refuse to use them anymore. I was thinking of a rivnut on the top and bottom, maybe a padded zip tie to stabilize the sides, but allowing the zip ties to bear the weight of the fan is asking for trouble. They'll rub through the passages in the radiator and spring a leak. The fan shakes about when it's running which exacerbates the problem.

RX-Ben

I used them for 2 years, 20k miles, 15 track weekends, holding an oil cooler to the front of a DeWitts radiator and a fan to the back.
YMMV.

Supercharged111

That's fine and well, but my bad experience has tainted me for life on those things. I did this on my beater *** Corolla project car because I refused to use those zip ties, I surely won't engineer a solution for the vette inferior to this.

trackboss

moespeeds, if you are referring to my setup I did not lay it forward, even though I wanted to. My car is a street car and if I did that I would have had to modify the air inlet for the motor and possibly run into smog issues so I chose to mimic the factory orientation keeping appearance low key although the radiator is custom and so is it's mounting. I chose to build my radiator from a generic griffin circle track radiator. Next time I'll just buy a core and build everything myself rather than add to one with existing tanks. It is a double pass so I use the factory upper hose and built a custom lower. Also, dual row, 1" wide tubes is considered about as thick as a core as could be used on the street, but I went with 1.25" dual row and after some testing I now know I could have probably went with even wider 1.5" rows and not had an air flow problem. The key is low fin count. IMO, the spal fan I used pulls more air through this setup than the factory fans pull through that system and I do have a condensor in front of the radiator. There is noticable suction at the radiator inlet under the nose. I let the car run for almost a half hour sitting still and played with the rpms to get the water as hot as possible yet it did not get hot. The fan came on as programmed and it took just a minute or so for the temp to drop enough for the fan to go off. Someday I'll program the fan to come on much later. Right now it comes on about 195 or so if I remember correctly. I'd rather it be triggered about 215-220 so it is not always cycling.
Let me explain the "high speed" system from the factory for those that are not familiar. There are 3 relays. One goes on at "low speed". It runs BOTH fans in series. Because of that the voltage drops so each fan runs slower than if it were getting a full 12 volts simply because there is twice the draw on one circuit. When "high speed" is triggered a second relay is turned on and the third simply switches grounds so that the fans run in parallel and each get full power from their own relay.

Supercharged111

LOL @ this side down on the leaf. What diameter fans are you guys running? I'm guessing 18" by the 118 P/N mentioned earlier.

trackboss

Mine is a 16". Spal offers several versions. I would need to double check, but I think mine is the 2082 model.

Supercharged111

is that radiator shorter than stock?

RX-Ben

The Flex a Lite 118 is 16" but pretty strong.