Installed Aftermarket Aux Fan

[Specter325]

Group

I have just completed the install of a Flex A Lite 16" s-blade auxilary fan in the wife's 525 Touring. It comes on at the appropriate time and does not blow the 30 amp fuse like the original one did. Unfortunatly tonight some T-storms have come through and the temp has dropped to the point that you really can't judge how the fan performs. I will send the wife out tomorrow when it is back into the 90s and see how it does. Total cost from Jeg's High Performance was $129 shipped. Stay tuned.

Ryan Brenneman
92 325i Track rat
93 525iT Wifemobile

[MBXB]

Did you mount it in place of the old AUX fan or in place of the regular cooling fan like in Bruno's site?

[Derek A.]

Did you remove the front bumper to install it? Was the 16" size a close fit or would you have done something different if you had to do again? Any other installation tips?

[Specter325]

Group

I installed the fan in place of the old aux. fan. I got a 16" fan and once I wiggled it around some it went right in. I removed the bumper to do it. But removing the bumper was very easy. Pry off the black plastic strips on either side of the front license plate frame. This exposes four nuts in the front. The side lights come out to the outside. Squeeze the metal retaining clips and they pop out. unhook the wires from them. Unhook the wires from fog lights if you have them. on either side there is a black plastic circular piece with a groove in it. Using a large flathead screwdriver turn these 90 degrees and they come out. Remove the four nuts on the front. The bumper will now come off. It may stick a little on the sides but there is nothing more holding it to the car.(at least on my 93 Touring). Once the bumper is off remove the trim piece that holds the kidney grills in place. This has plastic attachments that press off. Once this is off you are staring at the aux fan. Unplug it first. There are three or four bolts holding it on around its perimiter. Remove these and the fan comes out. Follow instructions on new fan for polarity and test with a battery to make sure fan rotates in correct direction. With the Flex-a-lite there were attachment points on the outside of the shroud. Using the ones with the holes in them I safety wired these to the stock fan mounts. Then I ran two more loops of safety wire through the ac condensor and the radiator, one 180 degrees from the other, to hold the fan securely against the condensor. Hooked up the wires with crimp connectors and heat shrink. Plugged it in and ran the car long enough to make the fan run. It worked and I cleaned up the wires with zip ties and bolted the bumper back on. After three days of driving including one stop on the side of the highway to feed the baby with the engine and AC on the coolant gage has not moved off of it's happy place yet. Admittedly it hasn't gotten back into the ninetys yet but before it would have overheated when my wife pulled off the road to feed the baby. Seems to be working. Any further questions let me know.

Ryan

[Gooch]

Does the fan work in two speed or one speed mode. In other words, did you wire it up to use the fan resistor?

[1992 BMW 535i]

Okay, here's an idea. Removing the fan, clutch and assembly and replacing it with an electric set-up. Has anyone done this? Great old musclecar mod that created horsepower by reducing parassitic power loss.

[Tiger]

Bruno did that.

[1992 BMW 535i]

Bruno, see any improvement with the electric fan set-up?

[Specter325]

Does the fan work in two speed or one speed mode. In other words, did you wire it up to use the fan resistor?

[Specter325]

And rely only on the aux fan for cooling. But their M50s are working a little less hard than ours. But you do get more power to the wheels this way. And if you just ran an electric fan in place of the mechanical one in addition to the aux fan you could be fine.

Ryan

[JR'Z 525]

Cool idea! You could do away with the fan clutch and the possible exploding fan blade syndrome all in one job. hmmm....
JR

[MBXB]

That Flexalite fan you installed is a 2500 cfm. Running it the way you have it in PUSH mode, thats plenty! You could use their Variable Speed Controller to run it for ALL your cooling.

[winfred]

off hand the only e36 that i can think of with a primary electric fan and no clutch fan is the m44'ed 318 and possible others in europe


And rely only on the aux fan for cooling. But their M50s are working a little less hard than ours. But you do get more power to the wheels this way. And if you just ran an electric fan in place of the mechanical one in addition to the aux fan you could be fine.

Ryan

[TC535i]

off hand the only e36 that i can think of with a primary electric fan and no clutch fan is the m44'ed 318 and possible others in europe

It's a common mod on 325/M3's, they just pull the fan/clutch and swap in a 70deg t-stat switch and a couple bottles of Water Wetter (just as a precaution, I don't think that crap actually does anything...) Won't really overheat unless it's seeing seriously hot tempatures (110+ and hard driving)