Saturday, February 10, 2007

The ugly electric fan

If your like me, there's nothing that can ruin a period perfect automobile worse than a "stick out like a thumb" modern piece of equipment on a car that far pre-dates it's modern upgrade. Most car people have their own pet peeves when it comes to this. For some, it's disc brakes, or an alternator instead of a generator, for others it's air conditioning, but for me, it's electric fans. Uugh.

Well,... As you can imagine, when I found myself with no other option but to use and electric fan, due to an engine swap to a much larger motor, I was not very happy.
I was hoping to hide the fan in between the radiator and grill shell, but there just isn't enough room. So my only option was to put the fan on the engine side of the radiator, but in a roadster with no hood or fenders, there's really no hiding it.
So I decided rather than hiding it, I'd dress it up to fit with the time period of everything else around it. I had seen pictures in old Hot Rod magazines of a couple cars that experimented with the use of electric fans on cars in the 50's. Most looked like house fans, and that was the inspiration for the treatment of my modern plastic necessity.

The following is a pictorial. Perhaps it may inspire others to hide their ugly moderness, and keep me delusional as to the decade I'm living in. LoL. Enjoy.

Cut away as much plastic possibly, that is not absolutely necessary.
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Find yourself an old table fan with the right diamater screen.
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Spray anything showing with old timey wrinkle paint.
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Cut off the finger guard of an old 40's or 50's fan, and attach it over your electric fan.
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And voila, modern cooling that's easier on the eyes.
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4 comments:

BWJones said...

Truly awesome ride and the fan is righteous...

Omar Cruz said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

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supermaine said...

Too bad it didn't easily fit between the radiator and the grill shell.. but good thing you've finally found a perfect place for it