I hope that someone can point me in the right direction. I have a Class A motorhome that is based on a Ford E350 chassis with a 460 FI engine. The clutch fan is over active. It comes on and stays on for long periods of time. The gauges do not reflect that the motor is overheating. I've replaced the clutch once with an OEM part since I was told that that aftermarket ones are junk and it the clutch seems to act normally (not kicking in when I'm driving on a flat highway at 60) but it has since gone bad again. It makes it a pain to take the thing out now since it's so bloodt noisey.
Any ideas on what I can do, replace it again or go with some other setup for the fan?
Thx!! Oh, I apologize that this is such a boring vehicle!!

 

I had a similar problem and I think the clutch fan must be one of the most replaced items on a vehicle. A garageman freind of mine said he regularly replaces them around 60,000 miles, but you can never tell when their going to go out. At his suggestion, I put a 19" flex fan with a pully spacer on the truck. You have to watch a little that you don't run up mountains at 3500 rpms doing 25 mph. That might flattten out the fan and not allow enough air through the radiator at lower speeds. All in all I'm pretty satisfied with the flex fan setup. I don't know how they compare with the thermofan on fuel mileage cause when the thermofan went out the last time, I toasted a head gasget too. I got a similar story from Ford when I asked about if their was any upgraded thermofan. The parts guy wanted me to think that the Ford product was superior Yeah, right, then why do they go bad so often.

Not a fan of thermofans,
Tony

 

Oh, yeah, you might try a cooler thermostat too, say a 190 premium style thermostat. And just to let ya know, the flex fan will sound like a loud room fan at low rpms. But they do move air.
Tony

 

Thx Tony.
I thought that the thermostat was a 190 stock? I bought a 180 to install, so you think that it's too low of a temp?

Why did you have to use a pulley spacer for the flexfan?

 

The last thermo that the garage put in was a 210. The one they took out was a 190, but he looked at "the book" again and said, yup 210 is stock. EFI might be different than a carb model or my garageman might have been wrong. I think I saw that autozone offers 3 off the shelf varieties for '87 including 210/190 and 180. I don't think 180 is too cool or else they might not make it available. I've heard/read that some thermostats only begin opening at the rated temp and fully open at a higher temp. Thus a 180 gives some buffer to this effect. The one premium thermostat supposedly fully opens at the rated temp from what I read.

I guess I should have called it a fan spacer rather than a pulley spacer as it goes between the pulley and the fan. The thermofan is thick enough that in order to get the fan at the same location as stock, you need to put a spacer in there. Most autoparts stores that carry the flex fans would also carry the spacers.

Stay cool,
Tony