Testarossa Radiator and Oil Coolers Fans

Hi Guys,

As it's getting close to Summer here in the Land Down Under, I had the beast out enjoying some of the fine weather on Tuesday and after cruising home in amongst a bit of traffic late afternoon, she started to get a bit warm. External ambient temp was 30 deg C, so not a real hot day, but the old girl got to 3/4 on the guage. Not good.

I pulled into the garage and had a listen and the radiator fan on the passenger (LHS) side was not working, and the lower oil cooler fan wasn't spinning either.

After testing a few things I ended up removing the fuse board and sure enough, there was a burnt pin on the white connector that runs to the LHS radiator fans. After pulling the back off the fuse board there was obvious damage in there which required repairs as I had done to my previous car.

See: http://www.ferrariaustralia.com/Technical/fuse_panel_repairs.htm

Following my own written guidelines, I repaired the damaged track and about an hour and a half later I refitted the fuse board and the old girl was running again.

 

BUT.....and you know there is always a but,

The lower of my two oil cooler fans still wasn't working. I sent a few emails back and forth to Steve M, who fortunately enough is always there to assist whenever I seem to strike a hurdle. Steve set me straight on how many fans these cars have and when they should operate.

I ripped out the relays and using a secially made wire with twin ended blade terminals, I bridged out terminals 30 / 87 at the relays and could therefore check the operation of all of my fans.

Sure enough, the lower fan had siezed solid.

The fan is held in place by four screws, three of which are reasonable to get to, and the last one is a #@3#@&*

Once finally out I took the lower fan to the bench and started to strip it down. Here's what I found:
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The motor was not only seized solid, but had still been getting current which had fried the armature and burnt in half the board that holds the two motor brushes and the electrical contactors.
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So I'm thinking.............'this isn't good!'

Ferrari Part Number 131510 - Testarossa part only for all models thru to 1991.

I check Ricambi USA - available $185 USD each.
I check Eurospares UK - 64.50 GBP each.

Freight to Oz - exorbitant in both cases. Bugga!!

Hmmm.............there is one word written on the fan blade. SPAL!

So I go hunting and find that SPAL make a large range of automotive electrical fans and are based out of the USA.

Most fans are 9 - 10 - 11 and 12" radiator fans, and then I stumble accross motorcycle / ATV fans, and located a fan which appears to be a direct replacement for the original fan. The shroud is the same and it mounts perfectly to the original bolt holes. Looks awesome. Have a look at this technical specificaton listing:
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I have written to SPAL USA regarding Oz distributors or agents, and located a couple of places here that do the car fans. Tomorrow I'll try and few motorcycle / ATV stores and see if anyone stocks these fans.

They list at under $60 USD each so that's great value. They are manufactured by the same manufacturer as original parts but with 20 years more technology.

If I can locate them, I'm going to get two and fit them. With two stacked vertically as per original it will finish the job off better.

If it works out, here's another ditty for the Testarossa replacement parts thread.

 

For the US members, these fans are available from WIZARD AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTS, INC in Florida for $59.95 USD and are a direct replacement. The only thing that may have to be changed are the crimp connectors on the original car wires as they have a small rubber boot to weather seal the original fans and the new ones probably wont require that.

More news later as the hunt continues for a local supplier. $38 USD to send to Oz and I really want to replace both, so it's worth a look locally first.

 

Here's a picture of the SPAL fan.
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And a pic of the original.

I wasn't clever enough to take them at the same angle for better comparison, sorry!!
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Well the new fans arrived just prior to Christmas and today I had a chance to have a look at it. It's been 35 deg C here the last two days and the old girl was getting a bit warm yesterday.

Here's some images of the new fan next to the still working old one, once it was removed form the car. As you can see, the mounts are perfect and the new motor style spins so much more freely than the original.
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Really simple to fit. Slip off the rear wheel and the fiberglass fluted panel that vents air from the radiator. Just a bunch of ten mm bolts to do this. The access to the oil cooler fans is so much easier this way.
Remove the old fans. Cut the electrical contacts off from the blue and black wires. Keep the rubber covers from the blue wires for use later.
You will need 4 x 4mm blade connectors (red) coloured as the blades on the SPAL fans are 4mm so 'normal' blades won't fit. Get some 8mm (5/16) heat shrink and cut off four bits about 30mm long. Thread these onto the four wires. Then slide the two rubbers from the blue wires onto the wires. Next, crimp the connectors onto the wires. Then slide the rubbers down the blue wires over the red crimp connectors. Your rubbers might be a bit old and split, so once you plug the crimp connector onto the newly fitted fans, you can slide the shrink tube down over the rubber and bond it all together neatly.
The rubbers from the neg side of the original fans doesn't fit into the new SPAL fans very well, so I discarded these and once the neg terminals were on the fans I slipped the heat tube all the way down over the crimp connector then sing the heat gun, let it shrink in place. Then I used convoluted plastic tubing as shown in the pictures to protect all of the original wires. I ran this all the way down over the negative terminals to add further waterproofing protection.
The new fans will locate 100% perfectly onto the original screw mount points. As per original.
All up, three hours, including pissing around in the shed looking for stuff. Not bad.
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Hi Adam,


The oil cooler fans are not a huge problem, like the radiator fans and fuel pump curcuits. I have a plan for that on my list of things to do next..............watch this space!

 

That is exactly the plan Adam, but I plan to go a step further.

I'm looking for a really nice relay mounting block, that will take six relays. It needs to have two nice mounting points so that it can be fixed to an appropriate place in the engine compartment. Then we identify the six troublemakers,

pumps, fans, AC clutch etc, and take the power wires to these appliances up to the new relays as trigger / signal wires. We can pick up a new power feed directly from the rear of the starter or from where the battery power splits on the rail, and use this for the relay pin 30 source.

Then develop a new loom that feeds to the problem appliances and run nice new wires to each unit. This should solve the Testarossa overheated fuse board problems once and for all.

So first things first, find the relay block.

If anyone has any ideas, please come forward.

 

This is sort of what I'm looking for, but with provision for six relays.

http://www.rallylights.com/detail.aspx?ID=772
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nd this would also work, they are dovetailed for fitting together, but six of these in a row would look a bit dodgy. I would prefer this already moulded so it looks like a factory component not an aftermarket add on.

http://www.rallylights.com/detail.aspx?ID=415

 

SPAL 5.6" fans model number 30100291.

I ended up getting them even cheaper from the following supplier. They blow heaps more air that the old stockies and are much quieter.


ART DUMONT
A1 ELECTRIC AUTO ACCESSORIES
2301 W 205TH ST STE 101
TORRANCE CA 90501-1453
http://www.a1electric.com/

 

Still having radiator fan issues here and with the weather expected to top 43 deg C tomorrow, it's not too good.

Last week we had three days of 44 and on one day I needed to use the car and things got a bit warm. I checked the fans when I got home and they were not running.

So I had a bit of a look around and found that the fuses had blown to the fans. 20 amp fuses shouldn't just blow so I looked further.

LHS fan had had the fuse board connector replaced with a 4.8mm crimp connector and the crimp hadnt worked and was loose. I fixed that with a new connector, and whilst it was off the road, I jacked up the rear and changed the water temp switch in the bottom of the LHS radiator for a new one with a lower operating range of 70/75. This means that the fans come on a bit earlier, and stay on a bit longer to bring the water temp down lower.

Seemed like a good plan considering the heat in Oz. Sure enough, now both fans work and come in at about 1/3 rd on the temp guage. All good. Running the car today in 38 deg and it never went over half. Great.

But............I was worried about them running for longer periods of time and what this would do to the wiring so I did an amp test on the current draw of each fan.

LHS fan spikes momentarily to 30 amps on start and then settles down to 18.5 - 19.2 amps when running. RHS fan spikes to 25 when starting and runs at 17.5 - 18 when running.

Not too good, when they are protected by a 20 amp fuse.

So now there is a small dilema. Replace the two operational fans with aftermarket or later model fans which pull less amps and take the load off the fuse board and connectors, or put a relay on each fan and take power to them direct from battery, using the original feed wire as a relay trigger wire.

Comments anyone?