I am trying to think of a method for everyone to test there cooling fan without the use of fancy equipment. I was thinking of hanging the cooling fan by one of those fish weight gauges and taking the on weight minus the off weight. I don't know how to convert that to CFM, or if the area has to be figured in either.
Any ideas?

 

That won't be accurate. Also, who cares what the fan will flow off the car running free. If you want to do a worth while comparison it needs to be installed in a car and tested under the same conditions.

 

The reason for doing this, is that all any person can do the same test on whatever brand fan they bought, then compare them on this site, and also compare them to the factory fans. It would be something easy. I myself and read other people trying to feel the air blowing to compare fans, but I couldn't tell a difference.

 

The problem is that a fan won't pull as much air when it has a restriction(radiator, condenser, etc...) and the drop in flow won't be the same for all fans.