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00:00 This time on Engine Masters, you're
00:01 going to find out which horsepower killer is our
00:04 biggest fan.
00:05 [engine revving]
00:08 [tires screeching]
00:10 [engine revving]
00:13 [tires screeching]
00:16 [engine revving]
00:20 [tires screeching]
00:22 [music playing]
00:26 [music playing]
00:30 [music playing]
00:31 This is Engine Masters presented by AMSOIL
00:34 and sponsored by Mr. Gasket and Earl's Vapor Guard hose.
00:37 Now, normally on this show, we are trying to make horsepower.
00:41 This time, we're trying to kill horsepower,
00:43 and we're going to succeed.
00:44 Every one of these cooling fans that's mechanically
00:47 driven off the front of your engine
00:48 is going to take some horsepower to spin.
00:51 As they're moving air, they're going
00:53 to give you some parasitic drag.
00:54 Which one, though, takes the most horsepower,
00:57 and which one takes the least?
00:59 That's what we're going to find out when we bolt them all up
01:01 to our 350 small block Chevy engine.
01:04 Now, every one of these fans is 18 inches in diameter.
01:06 Every one of them has six blades,
01:08 but there's different designs.
01:10 There's an OE type clutch fan.
01:12 There is a plastic flex fan.
01:14 There's an aluminum low profile fan.
01:17 And then there's the very old school steel fixed blade fan.
01:21 There's going to be one winner here
01:23 and three absolute losers.
01:25 We're going to go find out which is which right now.
01:28 Ready for your AMSOIL info?
01:30 Here's what I would normally do with an engine like this.
01:32 The premium protection oil.
01:34 This motor is so tame, you could drive it everywhere, any day.
01:38 This is a nice, good synthetic for a daily driver.
01:40 It can stick in the engine for 7,000 miles.
01:43 But AMSOIL recommended that instead we
01:46 use the Dominator racing oil.
01:48 Now, the additive package in this has more zinc in it,
01:50 more things for racing.
01:52 And there's only so many additives you can put in.
01:54 So it has fewer dispersants and fewer detergents in it,
01:57 but it's more stable with temperature.
01:59 And we might be seeing very small changes in horsepower
02:02 on this fan test.
02:03 And so they wanted to use an oil that
02:05 would be super stable regardless of temperature.
02:07 So that's what we're going to pour in this thing.
02:09 [music playing]
02:13 OK, we've got our little small block hung on the dyno.
02:21 And basically, that thing is just an implement of RPM
02:23 at this point.
02:24 That's all we really need it for.
02:26 That and a testing instrument for seeing how much power
02:28 it's going to eat.
02:29 We're going to give you the baseline here.
02:30 We've already warmed it up.
02:32 We've already got the thing consistent.
02:34 It makes the same pull every single time
02:36 so that we can see what's going on once we
02:37 start putting fans on it.
02:38 So fire it up.
02:40 Let's see what the baseline number is.
02:41 [music playing]
02:45 [engine revving]
02:48 It's good.
03:04 Well, I don't know if it's good, but it's there.
03:07 It's a good little motor.
03:08 It's a good motor.
03:08 Yeah.
03:09 It's not a bundle of power.
03:11 But it's certainly consistent and healthy.
03:13 It's the ultimate average small block Chevy.
03:15 And it runs really smooth.
03:16 So here's what we got.
03:18 It just made 406.9 pound feet of torque at 3,900 RPM.
03:22 And up top, we're looking at 349 horsepower at 5,200 RPM.
03:26 So pretty average little small block Chevy.
03:29 But that's all we need to know to move on and start
03:32 killing power with 25 pounds.
03:34 It's going to be surprising, I think,
03:36 to see what the--
03:37 Oh, fans are going to kill power.
03:39 I don't think they're going to make that much difference.
03:41 Here we go again.
03:42 Inverse speed is finest.
03:44 No, I mean, it's just--
03:45 Whatever we say--
03:46 It's not that.
03:47 --he just goes to the other side, goes to the dark side.
03:49 It's not that at all.
03:50 I mean, it's just the fan.
03:51 The worst fan is going to kill 30 horsepower.
03:55 I'd say 12 or 10.
03:56 Let's go pick which one we're going to put on first.
03:58 We're going to run these fans in order
04:00 from the one that we think will eat the least power
04:02 to the one that is the worst.
04:04 We think this is going to be the best.
04:06 It's a clutch fan.
04:07 The way these work is either they're thermal, like this one,
04:09 or they're RPM dependent.
04:11 And they're designed so that when it's cold,
04:14 it's not driving the fan as aggressively as when it's warm.
04:17 And then the RPM dependent ones that
04:18 don't have this coil right here, they
04:20 have fluid inside them that gets thrown out in a way
04:22 that the clutch deactivates.
04:23 So it's not spinning as much as high RPM.
04:25 But because it's cold in here, we
04:28 think this clutch fan is going to eat
04:29 the least power of the group.
04:31 When we have done this before, we've
04:33 run an alternator, an electric fan, as the baseline.
04:36 But the fact of the matter is, you're
04:37 running an alternator on your car,
04:38 whether you have an electric fan or not.
04:41 And the electric fan draws like 30 amps.
04:44 But so that's maybe one horsepower
04:48 that isn't even measurable on the alternator drag.
04:51 That's why we don't have an alternator on this.
04:53 The other thing you're going to see us do here
04:55 is we're going to hang this radiator in front of all
04:58 the fans with a shroud on it.
05:00 And that's because the fans are going to tend to eat more power
05:03 if they're just dangling out there in free air.
05:06 But this is more realistic as to what you're going to see in a car
05:08 because it's going to be in the shroud,
05:10 and it's going to have to be drawing through the radiator.
05:13 Here's one thing about the clutch fan.
05:14 Look, you can spin it now independently of the engine.
05:18 And that's how the clutch works.
05:19 If this was really hot, it would be engaged more
05:22 and have more drag on it.
05:23 Here's one thing you do need to know about the fan clearance.
05:28 You want like half to 3/4 of an inch of tip
05:30 clearance to the shroud.
05:32 You don't want it further away than that.
05:34 And you want the fan blade about halfway
05:36 concealed by the shroud, which you can see we've
05:39 got here also.
05:40 So this is like--
05:41 That's a pretty good alignment, isn't it?
05:42 --the ideal situation, yeah.
05:44 Ready?
05:46 Rock solid.
05:47 Wow, that's great.
05:49 I can't wait to see what it does.
05:51 I know.
05:52 I'm kind of interested in this test, too.
05:53 It'll be cool.
05:54 Because I know that electric fans are the best
05:56 choice for horsepower, but then you
05:58 have to listen to them and wire them
06:00 and have all that amp draw.
06:02 Yeah, and it really taxes the whole electrical system.
06:04 Yeah.
06:05 [engine revving]
06:09 [engine revving]
06:11 We're done already.
06:12 [engine revving]
06:15 Wow.
06:21 That killed power.
06:22 Wow.
06:22 Let's have a look.
06:23 400 pound feet of torque.
06:25 So we ate pretty much 7 pound feet of torque
06:29 and 14 horsepower that time.
06:32 Wow.
06:33 New peaks, 400 pound feet of torque and 335.0 horsepower.
06:38 If you look at the curve here, red is with no fan at all
06:41 and black is with that clutch fan.
06:42 You can see.
06:43 I'm surprised-- well, I was about to say
06:45 I'm surprised that it didn't eat more horsepower as RPM
06:49 increased, but it did.
06:50 It does.
06:51 If you look at the difference here, it does diverge.
06:53 So the more RPM, the less it likes it.
06:55 Boy, wait till we put that fixed fan on there.
06:58 That's going to be a lot worse.
07:00 So clutch fan, minus 7 pound feet, minus 14 horsepower.
07:03 Let's go to a flex fan.
07:05 Next up, we decided to go with a plastic flex
07:07 fan because it has softer blades than the steel one.
07:10 So we figured that it's probably going to eat less power.
07:12 The theory on these is as RPM increase
07:15 and it's drawing more air, that these blades flatten out
07:18 like this and therefore take less of a bite of the air
07:21 and eat less horsepower.
07:22 One thing you do need to pay attention
07:24 to if you're installing the fan is making sure you're
07:26 spinning it the right direction because there
07:27 is such a thing as a reverse rotation fan.
07:31 If the belt arrangement on the front of the engine
07:33 spins the water pump the wrong direction.
07:35 [music playing]
07:38 Did you take the bolt?
07:43 OK, plastic flex fan, ready to rip.
07:46 OK, plastic flex fan.
07:48 I'm almost wondering if it's going
07:49 to be better than the clutch.
07:51 Never know.
07:52 [music playing]
07:55 [engine revving]
07:59 Oh, that's hideous.
08:11 Oh, that thing is junk.
08:13 That's horrible.
08:15 We just made 388.3 pound feet at 3,800
08:22 and the horsepower 325.1.
08:27 Wow.
08:27 At 5,100.
08:29 That is pathetic.
08:31 We just lost 18.6 pound feet of torque.
08:35 Looking at the horsepower number,
08:36 we just lost 23.9 horsepower from no fan
08:41 to plastic flex fan.
08:42 That plastic flex fan is junk.
08:43 You know, when you said 30, I thought you were making crazy.
08:45 No.
08:46 But I think--
08:46 I've seen this.
08:47 Yeah.
08:48 It's not my first barbecue.
08:49 I've seen it too, but I just thought
08:51 with the fan and all that, I mean, the shroud
08:52 and everything in front of it, I couldn't see it taking,
08:55 you know?
08:55 Wow, that's bad.
08:56 OK, steel flex fan.
08:58 This is a progression.
08:59 Yikes.
09:00 Next up, steel flex fan.
09:01 Although, to be fair, I don't know
09:03 if I can call this a flex fan.
09:04 Because look, these blades are aluminum and hard.
09:08 They're usually stainless and flimsy.
09:10 So unfortunately, I bought kind of the wrong thing.
09:13 You can see that the plastic fan has a lot more bite
09:16 to the blade than this one.
09:19 So this might be actually our best one yet.
09:21 It's going to be hard to know.
09:23 Because this fan is so much shallower
09:25 in the pitch of its blades, it is not
09:28 sunk into the shroud as much as we would really like.
09:33 Next up, we've got our fixed aluminum fan.
09:35 I thought I was ordering a flex fan, but it's actually not.
09:38 And I think there's a good chance
09:40 this makes more power than the plastic one,
09:42 because it doesn't have as much pitch in the blade.
09:45 I think you're right.
09:46 Find out.
09:47 I'll go with that.
09:49 [fan whirring]
09:51 [motor whirring]
09:54 It's better than the plastic one,
10:08 but still killing power.
10:09 Yeah.
10:10 It's not much better, is it?
10:11 Yeah.
10:12 Yeah.
10:13 I think it was five or six horsepower better.
10:15 Look at the overlay.
10:17 So we just found out that that aluminum fan versus no fan
10:20 at all kills 12 pound feet and 20.3 horsepower.
10:25 So not as bad as the plastic one,
10:26 as you can see here on this curve.
10:28 The black line is the aluminum fan that we just tested.
10:32 The plastic one is on the red line.
10:33 But it's interesting before how they just kind of completely
10:36 diverged.
10:37 And now they diverge and then converge again.
10:38 You know why?
10:39 Plastic's flattening out.
10:40 Plastic's flattening out.
10:42 Finally, at that much speed, it's finally flattening out.
10:44 Yep, takes that much RPM, 5,000, before that plastic fan
10:47 started to melt.
10:49 Takes as much power as a fixed aluminum blade.
10:50 Right.
10:51 Exactly.
10:52 Never gets OK.
10:53 Well, the last one is going to be the fixed factory type steel
10:57 fan.
10:58 That's the one that I'm going with, maybe with the radiator
11:01 off.
11:02 It's killing 30.
11:03 I'm going to say it kills closer to 40 with the radiator out
11:07 of the way.
11:08 But we can test that after this.
11:08 I'd say 28.
11:10 Bolt it up.
11:10 Let's go.
11:11 The plastic's going to be the worst, I think.
11:14 OK, last one.
11:15 We're going to install what we assumed was going to be the
11:17 worst fan, which is this factory type steel non-flexible fan.
11:22 But I don't know.
11:24 The plastic one could be worse.
11:25 It's all about-- look at the pitch of the blade.
11:28 See how there's like a 90 degree cut on that blade,
11:31 whereas this one's more shallow?
11:33 So who knows what's going to happen here.
11:35 OK.
11:41 Ready?
11:42 Here we go.
11:43 Truth.
11:44 This is all of our number one picks.
11:49 So we'll have to see how smart we are or aren't.
11:52 We all said this is the worst, right?
11:53 Yeah.
11:54 It will be.
11:55 But then I was stunned by the plastic fan.
11:57 So I don't know.
11:58 The plastic fan was pretty bad.
12:01 This will be worse.
12:02 [engine revving]
12:05 Wow.
12:19 And the winner is--
12:20 [laughter]
12:23 Damn.
12:24 I called it.
12:25 No, you nailed it.
12:25 30 horsepower gone with the OE type fan.
12:29 I killed 30 horsepower and 18.8 pound feet of torque.
12:33 Wow.
12:34 OK, red line, no fan at all.
12:36 Black line is this fixed factory steel fan.
12:39 Look at that.
12:40 What a mess.
12:41 You know what's interesting?
12:43 It uses the same amount of fuel as with no fan.
12:45 Because the cylinder is making the same amount of horsepower.
12:48 But it's just the fan.
12:50 It takes that much more power to run the fan,
12:52 and that's what ends up with the magnet.
12:54 Right.
12:54 That's crazy.
12:55 So the takeaway is you really don't want that set up
12:57 on your hog rod.
12:58 No, you really don't.
12:59 I'm not sure you want it on anything.
13:01 Yeah.
13:02 OK, I have to know.
13:04 Let's go take the shroud off and find
13:05 out what it does in free air.
13:06 Nothing.
13:07 Think it's not going to make a difference?
13:09 I'm still saying more.
13:11 I'm still saying it's going to take more.
13:13 I bet you it'll take less.
13:14 No.
13:15 Well, there's only one way to find out.
13:17 Why are we sitting here?
13:18 We decided to remove the shroud.
13:20 We hadn't originally thought about doing that.
13:22 But I think we all agree that the more available air
13:26 that the fan can bite, the more power it's going to draw.
13:28 So we decided to go ahead and remove the shroud,
13:30 because we've all seen guys running around
13:31 with just a radiator, no shroud.
13:34 Not a whole lot different than this.
13:35 And I think they're going to be amazed to see how
13:37 much power they're giving up.
13:39 This side up?
13:41 The cap goes up?
13:42 Yeah.
13:43 Thanks for that tech tip.
13:45 It drains a lot faster with this down low.
13:49 OK, we just pulled the shroud off the radiator,
13:51 because our theory is that the fan's
13:54 going to bite more air that way and kill even more power.
13:57 Dulcich says nothing.
13:58 Let's find out.
13:59 Not that.
13:59 [fan whirring]
14:02 [engine revving]
14:06 It didn't care.
14:17 It was actually a little better, right?
14:19 So with the shroud on the engine,
14:20 it made 388 pound feet of torque and 318 horsepower.
14:25 We took the shroud off, it made 326 horsepower,
14:28 which is better, and 388 pound feet of torque.
14:31 So something different aerodynamically
14:33 is going on than what we expected.
14:36 Gosh, it's baffling, isn't it, guys?
14:38 Dulcich was right.
14:42 I'll say it out loud.
14:43 So that's a wrap on our fan testing.
14:45 We have to go come up with brilliant conclusions now.
14:47 OK.
14:48 Yeah.
14:48 I've already had my fun.
14:50 Me too.
14:51 [whooshing]
14:54 So you in the market for an electric fan?
14:57 Man, I feel like I got punched in the gut.
14:58 Why?
15:00 Oh, man, look at all the horsepower we lost
15:01 with those fans.
15:02 30 horsepower with the worst one.
15:04 I was never expecting it to be like that huge of a loss.
15:07 That's like a cam change in reverse.
15:09 I know.
15:10 Wow.
15:11 I called it right on the nose.
15:12 Oh, I know.
15:13 You hit it 30 horsepower.
15:14 I thought it would be like 11, 12, 13 maybe.
15:16 Here's the thing, though.
15:17 I think that the loss from the fan, the parasitic drag,
15:20 is fixed rather than a percentage of loss.
15:22 In other words, even if this made 800 horsepower,
15:25 spinning that fan 5,200 RPM is going to lose 30 no matter
15:28 what engine it's attached to.
15:30 Yeah, I think you're on to something with that.
15:32 But what if you were zinging that thing to 7,500?
15:34 It'd be even worse.
15:35 That's even worse.
15:36 We only ran this to 55, 52.
15:39 If you had more RPM than that, the loss from the fans
15:42 would be even more devastating.
15:44 Well, that's why this test kind of destroyed me.
15:46 I've got to change fans on everything I've got.
15:48 I know.
15:49 Oh, man.
15:50 Kind of life-altering.
15:51 That's what happens when you watch "Engine Masters."
15:53 Information you need to know.
15:55 Get to the garage.
15:56 Rip off that fan.
15:57 Put on an electric.
15:59 Information I don't want to know.
16:00 I know.
16:01 Makes life more complicated.
16:03 See you next time on "Engine Masters" presented by Anzoil.
16:06 You're in trouble, Dulcich.
16:07 Oh, no.
16:09 I got to admit, we just gagged him.
16:10 That was like 3/4 throttle.
16:12 You guys just totally dogged me on that.
16:15 I thought it was my 10 bucks.
16:16 I told you completely.
16:17 Oh, man.
16:18 (laughing)
16:20 you
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