JZiggy
Senior Member
After buying this 99 4Runner I was intrigued by the amount of space between the grille and the condenser. It looks like it was just asking for an e-fan :tongue1:
The mechanical fan for the radiator has a ton of cooling power. After playing with e-fans for the radiator on my 1988 4Runner for a few years I have decided that there's no reason to mess with the stock cooling system. So the purpose here is to just add a helper fan for the following occasions:
- Slow traffic situations on a hot day to help the A/C
- 4LO driving offroad with low RPMs to ensure a little better cooling
- A redundant system in the very, very low chance the mechanical fan had a problem
I was able to stuff a Spal medium-profile, 11" pusher fan in here. Here are the specs, it is a bit over 900 cfm.
I cut and bent two steel brackets that share the bolt holes with the horns. The only thing I had to disturb was to bend the bracket on the passenger side horn a bit. I added a couple zip ties on the bottom mounting holes but even without them it is quite solid. There's some PVC foam tape on the perimeter of the fan to help seal and cushion against the condenser.
Here's the switch and some wiring. It's a single-speed fan but I wired it up with two settings. HI is always on, tapping into a constant 12V from the inside fuse box (thank you, [MENTION=113939]JerkyDrewster[/MENTION] for the idea to use an add-a-fuse!) The LO setting grabs signal from the wire to the AC compressor. This is the "dummy" setting so you can just leave it alone and the fan will kick on whenever the AC compressor is running. Also a pic showing the wiring running from the cab into the engine bay -- I was leery of disturbing any factory wiring grommets and this seems to work nicely.
Also, thanks to [MENTION=138291]Tinigunner11[/MENTION] for sending me the harness-side of the fan switch, I really needed it!
The switch is a factory rear heater fan switch. I assumed (incorrectly) that the poles were independent. The way it works is that on LO it completes the circuit to one side and at HI it completes the circuit to both. I needed them to be separate, so here was my fix. Snip-a-dee-doo-dah and now they are separate poles.
I didn't snap a picture of the relay but it is bolted to the body next to fuse box under the hood. The fan relay kit from Spal was fantastic -- really heavy duty with quality wiring and an in-line fuse.
If anyone else is interested in doing something like this I'd be happy to sketch the wiring diagram.
Thanks for looking! :hiding:
The mechanical fan for the radiator has a ton of cooling power. After playing with e-fans for the radiator on my 1988 4Runner for a few years I have decided that there's no reason to mess with the stock cooling system. So the purpose here is to just add a helper fan for the following occasions:
- Slow traffic situations on a hot day to help the A/C
- 4LO driving offroad with low RPMs to ensure a little better cooling
- A redundant system in the very, very low chance the mechanical fan had a problem
I was able to stuff a Spal medium-profile, 11" pusher fan in here. Here are the specs, it is a bit over 900 cfm.
I cut and bent two steel brackets that share the bolt holes with the horns. The only thing I had to disturb was to bend the bracket on the passenger side horn a bit. I added a couple zip ties on the bottom mounting holes but even without them it is quite solid. There's some PVC foam tape on the perimeter of the fan to help seal and cushion against the condenser.
Here's the switch and some wiring. It's a single-speed fan but I wired it up with two settings. HI is always on, tapping into a constant 12V from the inside fuse box (thank you, [MENTION=113939]JerkyDrewster[/MENTION] for the idea to use an add-a-fuse!) The LO setting grabs signal from the wire to the AC compressor. This is the "dummy" setting so you can just leave it alone and the fan will kick on whenever the AC compressor is running. Also a pic showing the wiring running from the cab into the engine bay -- I was leery of disturbing any factory wiring grommets and this seems to work nicely.
Also, thanks to [MENTION=138291]Tinigunner11[/MENTION] for sending me the harness-side of the fan switch, I really needed it!
The switch is a factory rear heater fan switch. I assumed (incorrectly) that the poles were independent. The way it works is that on LO it completes the circuit to one side and at HI it completes the circuit to both. I needed them to be separate, so here was my fix. Snip-a-dee-doo-dah and now they are separate poles.
I didn't snap a picture of the relay but it is bolted to the body next to fuse box under the hood. The fan relay kit from Spal was fantastic -- really heavy duty with quality wiring and an in-line fuse.
If anyone else is interested in doing something like this I'd be happy to sketch the wiring diagram.
Thanks for looking! :hiding:
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