Derale 16926 for 66 mustang NO GOOD!
My 66 289 had given the previous owner and myself fits for years. It had a $600.00 hot rod air derale fan/shroud/radiator combo set up. The fan in that setup is the derale 19626 fan/shroud combo. I blew a leak in the radiator and replaced it with a 1" tube aluminum radiator and the problem got worse. I then put on a derale 14.5 high output fan and noticed a night and day difference. Now the fan cycles whereas before it was constantly on. The problem was the shroud. It prevented blow through by trapping the hot air (which is a real problem considering that aluminum dissipates hot air faster than copper if I understand it right) The four little rubber vents are not sufficient. The 14.5" is the first one that I have found that meets the 2.75" thickness requirment and blows 1500 cfm low and 2100 cfm high. I'm using the fan with a Spal controller v3 and it works fine. It is right at the max of the spalls amp rating so I noticed that when the old fans bearings started to go and the added resistance caused the amperage to spike, that the spall would not engage. That only happened at the end-of-life cycle for the previous fan and had worked flawlessly for 4 years. The new fan draws one less amp on high and I have had no problems so far. ***UPDATE: the spal controller will not work reliably on hot days. It's just to much amperage, so I'll be installing a couple mechanical thermoswitches into the intake manifold and some 70 amp relays to handle the switching.*** The fan covers more real estate to draw the air. It's still in the 70's so I'll post back after some hot summer days, but the new setup seems to be a winner. Finally!
*** UPDATE***Ok so it was 87 degrees today and I gave the new set-up a good testing. During normal city driving the radiator temp stayed around 195. The fan stayed on the low side. After a store trip, I left the car to idle in the driveway for 20 min and the high side kicked in and kept the temp at 210 which is the high side engage temp. So this is a great set-up that will fit into your 66. By the way, my stang is a 289 .30 over @ 9:1 comp. with headers, and alum. heads so it is a heat producer.
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