| here as this has been an on-going debate, but I have had great experience with the electric cooling setup in my personal Z. I'm using a custom double-pass radiator I designed/built for my Z last year and have experimented with various fans and some other tactics to improve the cooling efficiency of the seutp. I've had a ton of emails from individuals looking to purchase this radiator/shroud/fan setup and the over-due release date of this has been soloely for the fact that I want to ensure it is capable of handling the task in any condition. History: I finished the two-year buildup/assembly of my Z back in Feb 06 and within the first ~140 miles on the new setup, I entered a roadcourse event held in Gainesville where we were running 14-minute sessions. The cooling system performed without any issue - I was always monitoring the coolant temp via consult during the runs and she never overheated. Only caveat there was the ambient temps were down into the 60's. In terms of "real" testing of the cooling system, this wouldn't qualify. This past weekend I entered a "hot-lap" roadcourse event in Gainesville to finally get some good testing of the setup. The temperatures in Gainesville were 95+F and we were slated for a full day at the roadcourse. In the first session, about 5 minutes in, the coolant temps were rising up and I pulled off the track when the coolant temp hit 217F - this is the point where the ECU will begin delivering extra fuel to help combat the heat, but it is also a wise idea to stop once it gets this high. However, I came to find that my auxiliary fan was not kicking on at 190F as I had previously configured the ECU program to do. I found at Motorsports Ranch Roadcourse during ZCON '06 that the aux fan needed to be running to maintain acceptable coolant temps. With the AUX fan running and with temps out there at ~85F, she ran like a champ and never overheated. The aux fan has relatively broad blades which act as an air dam and really choke up the ram effect the air has when traveling at speed - at a standstill, the aux fan improves the airflow quantity through the radiator as well. For my second run at GIR this past weekend, I made the appropriate changes to the ECU code to turn the aux fan on at 190F and ran a full 10-minute session - the temp gauge never moved above its normal position - coolant temps <210 the whole session @ 95F+ ambient temps, ~80% relative humitidy. I made three more runs that day, car ran beautifully, no overheating issues and I took home FTOD out of 24 cars, so obviously I wasn't babying the car around the track. I am running Dunlop Pilot Cup Sport Race tires on the car (which are awesome tires, BTW: Thanks LUKE!) and ran the car at 18psi which these tires are very happy to plant the power from 2nd gear and up - dyno sessions have shown the car to produce ~540-560RWHP and ~540RWTQ at this boost level, which produces appreciable levels of heat that the cooling system has to contend with. In the end, an electric fan setup will handle the task, even in the harshest of conditions - at least in any ambient temperatures under ~100F. I've spent the past year+ experimenting with this setup and it has gone through several revisions - various shroud modifications were tried, different fans were tried, some worked, some didnt, and some worked but failed in short time (Spal 3000CFM). I've settled on a particular fan which only offers 2030CFM of flow but it has been the most reliable and it also comes at a very reasonable price. Perhaps with global warming I may need to go with a higher flowing fan at some point in time, but for now, it works. :)
[ ashspecz.com ]
[ agpowers@bellsouth.net ] Enthusiasts soon understand each other. --W. Irving.
Are you an enthusiast? If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein
|
