What did you do to your rig today?

[T1 Terry]

The first mistake people make is trying to use the fan to push air, it won't, fans pull air out of the shroud area and natural air pressures pushes the air through the radiator core to replace it. The second thing is the fan is only designed to spin in one direction, so to turn the fan into a puller rather a pusher the fan must be removed from the fan motor and turned over. The next thing is getting the best fan for moving air and that is not the cheapest one you can find on E Bay.
All cars and SUV's now use electric fans, no mechanical fans on them so they must work, why not go to a wreckers and get them there as they must work if they can keep the car engine cool under all conditions.
As far as the all electric with fans, water pump, power steering, the idea is to direct drive the electric motor/regen motor from the crankshaft, so no alternator or starter motor either. The new Toyota Prius doesn't even have a pulley on the crankshaft, everything including the air con is electric so what I'm suggesting is actually new, just new thinking adapted to an old design.

T1 Terry

[Busman]

Disagree with that T1 after I saw a study done by Volvo, they found that pushers actually moved greater volume of air, as the air that was outside the radiator was way more dense than the air heated by being pulled through it.
Europe study, probably snowing at the time, so not a lot of relevance to Australia I guess
Surprised me too

From that study:

This increase of 24% in density could be translated in 24% increase in mass air flow. This means
according to 20, that the heat dissipated by the cooling system could be improved the same percentage,
if losses are neglected. Therefore, if the fans operate under this high temperature their lifetime is reduced
and the conclusion is that in order to get as low power required as possible the fan shall be placed where
the density is higher, i.e. at the cold side of the heat exchanger

[Toolman]

The best fans are pushers, look at most earthmoving gear!, and most are now hydraulic variable speed drive.

[Busman]

The same study examined the power required to drive hydraulic against electric, it found for the same cooling effect it was 12.5 Kw for hyd and 2.5 for electric, I found that interesting as well.

[BruceS]

A lot of bulldozers & other earth moving machinery have reversible fans so you can change them according to what they are being used for. Stick raking & tree pushing required a pusher fan to keep the leaves & bark off the radiator.

[bob r]

All dozers and track loaders that I drove the fans pushed through the radiator with catterpillar loaders the radiator could be reversed the back of it would get sand blasted after a while and you could turn it to double it's life.

Bob

[T1 Terry]

The main reason for earth moving equipment to have pusher fans has nothing to do with efficiency. It is to keep the dirt out of the radiator core. If pusher fans really did work better then why would manufacturers mount the fans behind the radiator? The only fans in front of the radiator are auxiliary units to assist the main fan when the air con is running. European cars are sometimes the exception to this rule, Mercedes is one and they have serious over heat problems in traffic.

[Toolman]

The main main reason that most motor vehicles have a suction fan is because of the forward motion providing air flow, but most if they have a
electric fan use a pusher mounted in front of the radiator . Out of interest the new CAT D7E electric AC drive dozer uses a hydraulic variable speed fan when most everything else is electric

[Toolman]

Got my Denning bus licensed today as a Panel Van with a 22.5 ton GVM

[Dot]

Got my Denning bus licensed today as a Panel Van with a 22.5 ton GVM

Go on show us the newly registered panel van