| Message |
bought this fan back in 2006, installed just earlier this year. I had to make the move to an Efan due to the custom 2.5 inch piping and 10X4.5 SMIC's i secured from Toms Turbo. I had this fan already in my garage, so i figured what the heck lets try it. This 16 inch fan kit supposedly pushed 3000 cfm. I had bought this kit originally for over $300, and it was designed by Ash, so i figured that it was quality stuff. I didnt use a shroud bcause frankly it didnt fit, and also ive been told by people who make fan kits for a l iving, for a 16" fan to be mounted on a core that is 17" X 18", a shroud would be a waste of money. fast foward to this year, ever since i had put on that efan, despite me having a speedyzx / scott smith type vented hood, despite having a secondary radiator on the under bottom of the z, despite an air guide, despite a 3" thick McCullach radiator, and despite me living in San Francisco where it never gets too hot or too cold, my water temps have been higher than i would like. They have ranged anywhere from 185 to 225 degrees farenheit. And the temps would get higher and higher the longer i drove. I had never suspected Ashs fan was the culprit, as i had suffered a blown radiator hose pulling into my driveway and subsequently had to bleed air out of the system. I chalked up the high temps as being the result of air still being in the system. however, after all the air was bled out i still had higher than satisfactory water temps. Then one day i had a chat with a distributor for SPAL e fans. I showed him the picture of the Ashspec efan and that when it was first hooked up, it was a pull fan but once the polarity was reversed, it was switched to a pull. He had told me that fans that are reversible and are designed for push duties generally dont flow what they are supposed when u make them a pull fan. He questioned the origins of the fan, informed me that it was NOT a SPAL fan after i gave him the serial number, and he questioned whether it really pushed 3000 cfm (as he stated, it is supposedly a major problem in the efan industry, claimed cfms often arent backed up in reality ). At this point i was willing to try other alternatives, so i purchased a genuine SPAL fan from him (2450 cfm 16" fan) and no shroud. NO shroud because the 16" fan almost fits my 18" crossflow radiator (including endtanks) to a tee; radiators with a much larger core size than the dimensions of the efan would defintely benefit from having a proper shroud howver. I asked him why not the 3000 cfm model that SPAL sells? he stated that the 3000 cfm model is not recommended at all for the street, that it is really not designed to be on continuously in stop and go traffic and more than 20 minutes at a time, and that it is generally unreliable and has a short l ife span for a street car. He stated that any 3000 cfm 16" efan with those kind of slim dimensions shouldnt be used on a street application.
After the 2450 SPAL fan was installed and the Ashspec fan was taken off, all i can say is wow!! i wish i had gone this route earlier. Thanks to Seb from specialtyZ for letting me know his success with the SPAL fans. temperatures never got above 195 degrees F, they ranged anywhere from 175-195 after about an hour of driving in stop and go and freeway. Once, in stop and go traffic, during the daytime, my temperatures got to 195 and the fan kicked in, temperatures dropped to sub 177. When i had the Ashspec fan, when it got to 195, even with the fan on, it would continually rise or stay the same, never drop below to that extent.
here are some pictures of the old setup: 
Here you can see my setup; i also replaced the fluidyne oil cooler i had with a smaller B&M unit, cut vents in the fender liners to allow air coming through the core of the smics to have somewhere to go, and I also used some ducting from home depot to route the fog light ducts to the SMIC's. And the new setup: 
New B&M Supercooler I installed 
New SPAL fan
I can only conclude that after having the Ashspec fan for only about 400 miles that either the cfm is seriously overrated on these fans, or there was something wrong with the motor on this particular unit. with all things being equal, the 2450 cfm SPAL unit blew away the ashspec fan with supposedly 3000 cfm. I am not sure what company made his fan, but from the looks of it it was Zirgo. I have not heard good things about zirgo; what i have heard is that their fans cfm are overrated and the motors are not reliable at all.
this post is not to bash Ash, as i believe he is a good guy who is a true Z enthusiast who genuinely cares about people. It is just a post to relay my experiences and to make a suggestion to Ash, that perhaps more research needs to be done into which parts you are going to use for your kits. A customer shouldnt be used as the test subject, all that should be ironed out before you come to market. I am a hawk when it comes to watching my HKS water temp gauges, so if the temperature started drastically increasing i'd pull over to the side of the road and shut if off. For guys who are on stock gauges with the fans we are lucky that no one we know of blew a motor because of it. 
got me a bottle
|
 |
Replaced Ashspec efan kit with 16" SPAL: results - 
