Hey gang, just installed a taurus 3.8l fan (90-95) and they are the answer to our prayers. I had to trim it a little in a few places and I used super black to seal it to the outside of the radiator. It sealed so good I didn't have to use anything to hold it down. I picked up the entire radiator and fan assembly by the fan and it didn't budge. I also used a flexalite fan controller and it worked perfectly also. It has a **** on it and you can dial in when you want it to come on. You can also wire it to the A/C and to a toggle if you want to. Very flexible and this fan moves more air than anything I have ever used and I have used a ton of them over the years. I used distilled water, one gallon of antifreeze, two bottles of purple ice and a 170 stat and the fan actually cools it till it shuts off on a 96 degree day at an idle. It popped a 30 amp fuse immediately so I used a 50. When the fan kicks on the volt needle drops it uses so much juice but worth every bit of trouble. I used #8 stranded wire and it never got warm. I put it on the drivers side to clear the water pump better. These fans are the bomb and I will use nothing else from now on.

 

Oh no! Sacrilege! a FORD part on your 3rd Gen.???

 

Yea but I can say it blows pretty well. My other third gen has a ford 9 and green ford 42lb injectors. WAIT!!! Your right, this is getting obsurd. I must say 10 hail chevys and 5 our blowers.
I see the light; I am healed.

 

Very very funny.

 

Hehe,i have two of those taurus fans in my spare parts
stash and noticed the emblem of an OEM fan supplier
on one of them;made for ford by that supplier so not
100% ford part-just the shroud/bracket made to ford
specs Another factory electric fan i have found that
is very powerful(and '80s GM all the way)is the fan
found in '82~'85 midsize FWD with the 4.3L diesel,
cutlass ciera,pontiac 6000,celebrity,etc. Someday i
will test one of these against the taurus fan to see
which delivers the most airflow-will be a close race

 

Well I would love to relieve you of one of the fans since I have to put one on the iroc with the ford 9 rear and the green 42lb injectors. The fans really do work much better than any fan I have ever been able to get ahold of. They say the lincoln mark viii has about the same fan except slightly better. The taurus fan is supposed to be anywhere from 4000 to 4500. I have researched them and all the rock crawler people and many other forms of auto enthusiast swear by them and now I know why. I need one more and I will say a few more hail chevys and not overheat anymore. The flexalite temp control module # 31149 works awesome as well and is very versatile. I looked at my temp gauge and when it reached 180 I turned the **** untill the fan came on and it kept it there right on the money. The fan would turn on for 10 seconds or so and then turn off for 10 seconds which tells me the fan cools extremely well since the other fans stayed on. Please post the results of your pepsi challenge with the fans and try and get amp draw if you can. Oh, and which one fits the best. I had to do some fabricating with the taurus fan but it actually ended up fitting extremely well after I ground on two sides of it. I mounted it with the harness extension ring pointing down and the wires pointing toward the radiator cap. I am very pleased with this set-up. Maybe the motor from the taurus fan could be retro fitted into another fan shroud that would work even better.

 

the two i have are '91 and '94,haven't looked at them
in ages,but IIRC,the wiring is slightly different;kinda
remember the '91 has 3 wires and the '94 4 wires-
could be wrong on that though.The 4.3 transverse
diesel fan does not have a shroud-just a 16 1/2dia.
7-blade fan with a ring,about 3 1/2 thick at the motor
this fan mounts with 3 tubular steel arms positioned
for pretty easy thirdgen adaptation these pull a lot
of current at startup,so in original installation there is
a resistor/thermal switch setup to start the fan at low
speed then kick it up to high after a delay in order to
prevent a massive current surge.A fan very similar to
the 4.3 diesel but with slightly smaller blade and a
shroud can be found on certain '84-86 4cyl fieros and
'86-87 buick GNs,the size and shape of the shroud
making for easy thirdgen adaptation.A taurus fan
could be wired to start up at slow speed then kick to
high if extra cooling needed.
I was wondering about the current draw of the taurus
and 4.3 diesel fans too,will post results when i test.

 

You didn't solve your cooling problem, you just put a bandaid on it.

 

i have a flexalite controller. i have fans from a 4th gen camaro that i trimmed to fit. a 180 thermo and it cools perfectly. i also use 1 gallon antifreeze and the rest drinking water with 1 bottle water wetter. a taurus fan is a 2 speed. the reason it is drawing so many amps is that you have it hooked up to high speed only. the flexalite controller comes on at 60% first and then 100% if needed if it is the good controller. from what i have learned this weekend is that an rs single fan spaced away from the radiator as gm intended will cool a tpi with a/c in houston weather. 98* with near 100% humidity. i have also seen the same set up cool a 425hp 406 small block. both 180 thermostats. i believe that this is all centered around the cooling system. i can drive my car around the house in the neighborhood and have the fans come on. if i have long stretches the fans never have to come on because the dam and the cooling system do their job. we all know the taurus fans move air. but i dont think that is needed to keep a 3rd gen cool if all else is good.

 

Well the bandaid is working better than it ever has before. I am getting more air through it now (While not moving) and I can keep the needle around 180 instead of creeping past 220. I do think it has a small head gasket leak though because it is harder to cool than my 406 high compression iroc with all forged internals and over 400hp and over 500torqe at the wheels with the stock dual fans.

 

I installed a 1996 Ford Taurus cooling fan on my 92 Z28 and have it set to operate on high for the summer as soon as the ignition is turned on. It has worked very well for the past few months but lately it has been turning itself off and on for no apparent reason. Does anyone know if there's an internal relay inside the fan? Maybe the fan motor is just going bad. I hesitated to go with the single fan installation because, with the dual fans, at least my engine wouldn't be completely trashed if one of them stopped working while my wife was driving it in 100 degree stop-and-go traffic. I'm thinking of going back to dual fans or installing a third fan in front just as a safety valve. Anyone experience problems with intermittent fan operation on this particular fan? Thanks.

 

the two spare taurus fans i have don't have any built in relays,but i kinda remember ford had a recall on taurus of this era because the fans were getting burnt out from ice jams in snow areas;ford retrofitted a self-resetting circuit breaker to protect the fan motors from burnout-I don't know where ford installed this circuit breaker-might be in the fan motor itself,circuit breaker going bad or fan pulling excess current and tripping out the circuit breaker could be the cause of the problem.

 

Thank you, 8t2-z-chev!!! I will take a closer look at the fan after I pull it off the car. I am thinking about going to another fan because I can't afford to have that one fan stop working while someone else is driving the car -- either a more-reliable single fan or a dual fan setup. I was lucky yesterday that my wife didn't blow a head gasket. There was boiling coolant going into the recovery tank. It must have stopped working just as she was getting close to the house.

 

Abray you may want to watch your fan closely, it shouldnt pop a 30 amp fuse instantly nor draw your volts down, sounds like its shorted.

 

UPDATE: I found what was causing the Taurus cooling fan to cut out. It's the brown fusible link that comes from the positive terminal of the battery and runs to that big black connector (picture). After driving the car for 45 minutes, I noticed the fan had stopped. When I moved that brown wire the fan started running again.

I don't know what rating the brown wire is set to melt, but obviously the fan is drawing too much current for the wire. I guess I can either get a different fan or try to re-route the wiring so that there are no fusible links to melt.

SECOND UPDATE: I found the schematic for VIN 8 vehicles with the dual fans. It looks like the brown (rust) fusible link going into connector C145 in the picture below only goes to the cooling fans (pdf). The red link into C145 goes to the fuel pump, fuel pump relay and ECM.

I'm considering replacing the rust link with a higher capacity link -- perhaps a red link. The FSM says that a fusible link is "four wire gauges smaller than the wire it is designed to protect." Maybe I'll go to the next higher size, whatever that is. I noticed the schematic has a .5 next to the Rust Fusible Link D, but I'm not sure of the significance of this.

At this point I'll either upgrade the link or figure out a way to bypass the fan relays all together and just run the fans directly off the battery with a relay for the ignition.

THIRD UPDATE: Since no one seems to carry or know anything about fusible links, I simply bypassed the Rust fusible link and installed a 30 amp fuse in a line between the positive of the battery and the other side of connector C145. I let the fan run for about five minutes and, although the wires I used to bypass the link are three times the size of the link, they are getting hot to the touch. I'll have to see how this works out. In a steady state, the fan draws 18 amps. When it initially starts up, it's drawing 28 amps.

 

Do you need a extra fan in front of the radiator as well? I live in phoenix az. The summer reaches 115 degrees. 3 months a year my car overheats if I don't take precaution. Have my fans running constant from a toggle switch. Air conditioning makes it over heat so fast as well. What is the best thing to do in my situation. I know several people here in phoenix with the same problem.

 

I had the Taurus cooling fan on last summer when the temperatures were up around 110. With it wired to high all the time, it kept the temps below 240, even in stop-and-go traffic. Tucson is 5-10 degrees cooler than Phoenix, but I think the Taurus fan will do the job.

If your radiator is more than a few years old, I would consider dropping in a new one (they aren't that much) and adding some of that Water Wetter or Purple Ice. For maximum cooling effectiveness, make sure your coolant to water ratio is 30% in the summer. You can go to Autozone and get one of those Prestone anti-freeze testers. Below is an excellent link on use of the tester. The article is for Mercedes, but if you scroll down you will see how to calibrate the Prestone anti-freeze tester and this would apply to any car.

I think the setup I have now with one Taurus fan will keep the temperature under control this summer. I'm just worried about melting the wiring. The fan pulls 18 amps continuous and 28 amps on startup. I actually saw it jump above 30 amps on a few starts. As stated above, I bypassed the brown "fusible link" and installed a 30 amp automatically resettable circuit breaker instead.

http://www.k6jrf.com/MB_WW.html

I am also running a Flow Kooler water pump. http://www.flowkoolerwaterpumps.com/

I've had excellent results for over 15 years. In fact, a few years ago, I noticed that the original Flow Kooler pump, which I installed about ten years prior, had started to leak out the weep hole. To my surprise, the company exchanged it for a new one, free-of-charge. They really do stand by their products.

 

If you guys still have the old stock fan motors in your cars, replace them. They are most likely whats causing the low airflow in the cars. They can and do wear out, which means they slow down or even short out..

 

That's probably not a bad idea. I had previously replaced both fans with the Autozone equivalent because -- like just about everything else on this car -- I figured GM had either discontinued them or wanted some ungodly amount for them.

If this Taurus fan is creating too much of a load on my electrical system, I may just look into going back to the dual-fan setup. I really don't like the idea of one big fan standing between me and a blown head gasket if it went out. Do you happen to know if GM still makes the fans and whether they are reasonably priced? With Autozone, you get what you pay for. I think their fans were probably junk ab initio.

 

Im fairly certain the fan motors are the same from 89-02. Not sure if GM still has them tho. Id bet they are pricy from GM

 

Everything is pricey from GM. It's like they are punishing you for keeping a 20+ year old car on the road. I have a 1994 V8 Mercedes sedan and I can get any genuine factory part on that car within days from parts.com. Any comparable part for the MB is usually 1/3 the price of the Chevrolet, if they even make it anymore. I would never buy another GM product.

Here's a perfect example. Factory front pads for a 1994 Mercedes E420 are $59.40. This is not aftermarket stuff but the real thing. The last time I changed pads on my Z28 I went to the dealer and they wanted almost $300 for a set of factory front pads. Screw them!

BRAKES / BRAKE COMPONENTS / BRAKE COMPONENTS / FRONT PADS FRONT PADS All Models

MSRP Core ? Save Online Price $83.00 $0.00 $23.60 $59.40

 

300 for factory pads??? Unless you have 6piston 06 ish vette pads, I would ask them that the hell is going on??