4200 miles in 18 days went fairly well on vacation. But I have high standards. Even sitting in traffic, but especially near rockcrawling in low range A/C left something to be desired. Temp gauge never budged an inch, er MM, and is this a real one or a buffered one like in the BMWs I'm so fond of where dead center is anywhere from 140 to 220F?
Looking and measuring things I see I can probably squeeze in a 10" fan, or mounting below a pair of 7" fans? Also thinking of mounting a radiator sensor/switch on the high side line. Not sure how to calibrate it, but since coolant doesn't seem to be a problem that would appear to be the logical path.
Thoughts, suggestions, calling me an idiot, I'm open for input!
Actually I'd self describe myself a a crazy man, not an idiot.
I'm in the same boat down here in the SW, but there are other things that needs to be checked before adding the complexity of a electric pusher fan. That's a Band-Aid I'd like to avoid. In my case, my evap needs to be replaced, as well as the Orifice valve and whatever else! At 450xxx miles, I'm not expecting 40deg vent temps.
On my 80 series, I did add two pusher fans in front of the condenser. This wouldn't have been necessary but when you add a turbo, the heat soak is just too immense. If you're thinking of adding fan(s), i'd add two so that the bulk of the condenser is cooling off equally vs having partial cooling.
The thermistor sensor fix created by someone extremely knowledgeable in this stuff is very compelling. I need to try that also!!
Additionally, the silicone (viscous) fluid in the fan clutch does lose it's lockup efficiency over time so I may start with that easy one. My 80 has 10k CST so I might put that in the 4runner as well.
Anyway, the point being there's a whole host of crap one needs to do before pusher fans are added. These 4th gens are long in the tooth and parts are wearing out! This is my opinion of course.
I installed two 12" fans from Amazon. The one on the driver side in the pic had to go between the ATF cooler and the A/C condenser. Just took a little creativity but it fits perfectly. I'm using an Omega thermocouple calibrator to read two thermocouple inputs on my drive home. The vent temps are definitely running cooler and the interior is cooling down nicely. Of course, a steady hwy cruise is optimum and that's where i'm seeing vent temps at 45deg. You may not know this but the 80 series has a ball vent and it can really freeze your balls on a long hwy cruise!!
I started this saga with ChatGPT by feeding it a lot of data like low pressure, high pressure, vent temps, vent temps, cab temps, ambient temps, suction line temp, discharge line temp, etc. As I did minor improvements, I kept feeding that data to ChatGPT and it was remembering all of my iterations in a concise manner. I think this is a good way to go down this rabbit hole using a more "scientific" method, so to speak. This is for the 80 series landcruiser, but i'll do the same thing for the 4runner when the time comes.
