First off, I'm a brand new member and just want to say hello. I've been a long time member and Senior Staff over at www.stangnet.com and recently picked myself up a gorgeous black 2006 FX4 SuperCab with only 27,000km (about 17,000-miles) on the clock. This site came highly recommended by a couple of members over there and after spending the last week going through past posts to see what could be said about these trucks I have to say I agree.

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Anyway, down to business....


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I plan on doing an underdrive pulley/Electric water pump/Electric Fan swap in the next week or so in attempts to pick up a little fuel mileage and free up some existing horsepower. I guess my question here goes out to those that have done it. What length serpentine belt will I be needing to replace the factory one? <O</O

 

What...nobody here has run an Electric water pump and underdrive pullies at the same time?

 

e-fan and underdrive pullies are about it for most

most poeple on here spend money on lift kits and tire and other things, since thought who have done pullies or fans have had little to no gain vs cost

also didn't know anyone made a electric for a 5.4

 

I bought the Meziere WP346S pump. Its designed to work with all year modular engines of the 4.6/5.4/6.8L variety.

http://www.meziere.com/ps-1158-1126-wp346s.aspx



None of this is meant to be to be a huge horsepower gain (although I can't see the combination of the three not freeing up somewhere in the 15rwhp range). It's more of an experiment to see how much I'm able to improve the stock fuel economy on the 5.4L 3V. I figure reducing the parasitic loss to the engine as much as possible was as good a start as any?

 

Check with Troyer Performance. They do U/D pulleys and electric fans. I am sure they could figure the difference with the water pump in the mix.

Been tossing the idea around also...along with headers and tuner. I know Tylus will come and beat me with the supercharger stick since the cost of all that would be more than going with the boost. But I think it would be safer for the folks driving around me if I didn't get the supercharger.

 

According to the manufacturer of the water pump you bought, you don't need another belt.
and going to e-fans does not eliminate the pully that was used to drive the fan.

Fits Ford modular engines
Idler design lets you keep all of your serpentine belt driven accessories
Suitable for street or drag strip use – 3000+ hour life expectancy
Show quality black finish - clear anodized pulley

The unit has a built in idler pully so you do not have to change anything else.

Lets see 3000 hours, huh. for me thats 1500 2hr trips to work and home. 260 days of work a year, 6 years life expectancy, not to bad. Add weekends and trips, and errands, and looking like about 5 years of life under normal driving. Thats not too bad, but $426 for a water pump is kinda steep.

 

Keep in mind....I am combining this pump with underdrive pullies as well (or at least the crank pulley), so the required length of the belt will indeed change with the addition of the smaller crank pulley. Even if the water pump pulley diameter does not.

 

I still don't think you'll have to change the belt because the tensioner should have enough travel to cover the reduction in pulley size.

 

Lets hope so.....I'll keep you all updated.

 

Have you put on the electric water pump yet? It intrests me for mine.

 

Not yet. I plan on putting it all together next week. Just waiting on the external thermostat probe kit from Summit to come in.

 

Just an update.....


I've finished the swap and it seems to work just fine. You will in fact have to swap out the factory serpentine belt for a much smaller one. Even with the tensioner at full swing, you could easily pull the stock belt off by hand. The factory belt is roughly 102" and I went with a 98" belt for fitment. It fit nice and tight with just a little bit of room in the tensioner for removal. I also bought a 99" belt in case the 98" was too short, but the 98" fit the way I wanted it too and I figures would probably stretch a little over time, so I didn't bother trying the other one. I just went with a plain old Goodyear belt.

I'll probably either bump up my idle a couple hundred RPM in the future, or search around for a slightly smaller alternator pulley to replace the stocker. I haven't had any charging issues thus far, but I did notice my dash lights were a little dimmer at idle. According to the stock tach, it's idling at about 675RPM. Just feathering the accelerator up to about 800RPM seemed to brighten the lights back up again. I'm gonna run it this way for a while and see how it does.

I ended up at the last minute going with a Ford Contour Dual 10" Electric fan. Partly because I wasn't sure if the single 14" unit would sufficiently cool my engine because of its smallish shroud size, but mostly because my Brother used it for one of his on projects and didn't tell me.

The dual 10" fan on the Contour can be had on all year V6 2.5L Ford Contours, Mercury Mystiques and Mercury Cougars. Some of the 4-cylinder cars had them too, but without looking under the hood, you won't know for certain. The safe bet is going with the V6. I still had to make up some custom bracketry for it to fit, but it did sport a larger over all fan shroud than the single and cools the engine every bit as well as the stock mechanical set up did.

Power wise...the truck feels a little peppier in the lower ranges and seems to accelerate smoother. I wasn't expecting any large power gains and I wasn't awarded any either...but there's is a noticeable difference.

I haven't yet calculated my fuel mileage, since I haven't really driven it enough to come up with any hard numbers, but just judging by what I've driven so far, I can almost certainly tell you there's a good 2mpg (possibly more) increase over what I was getting before, which was between 13-15mpg mixed city driving under normal conditions. I don't drive it super easy, but I'm not on it all the time either....so individual hard number results will vary, but count on an improvement regardless.

One of the nicest perks of the whole ordeal is that it gets rid of the huge, bulky fan shroud. Which means once that one bolt holding the stock air tube is removed, it now provides EASY access to the oil filter….which I’m sure many here will find it a huge plus. The hardest (and by hardest I mean most time consuming part) of it all was the wiring. I’m great at turning wrenches and the mechanical stuff, but when it comes to wiring I’m a mess. I let my dad help me out on that end of it.

All and all, I’m very happy with the changes. It was fairly expensive by the time all was said and done with the US exchange rate, shipping costs and horrendous UPS brokerage fees….so needless to say it’ll take a couple of years worth of driving before it pays for itself, but I still think it was worth the effort.

I can provide pics if asked, but there’s really very little to it.

 

Just calculated some new mileage based on a recent trip
Aside from the above additions, my truck also has a Tonneau cover and the stock Pirelli Scorpions inflated to about 40psi.

The results were…

Driving conditions :
Mixed city/highway driving….about 85% highway
Average speed 100-110kmph (approx 60-65mph)
Semi hilly terrain with regular downshifting on steep hills and minimal vehicle passing.
Temperatures between -2 to 1C (approx 28-34F)
Elevation average about 360M above sea level (approx 1150ft)
BP 102.21kPa

Avg 13.36L/100km (17.61mpg)


All it all, it isn't horrible. I was hoping for a little better, but considering the terrain and the cooler winter air, this is pretty acceptable. In any case...there aren't many legitamate mods out there that both improve acceleration and usable horsepower and increase mileage at the same time. So this was a plus.

 

Thanks for the update.

Still looking to do this myself. Found out my neighbor's 09 Dodge Ram is running electric fans from the factory.

I am curious to what your setup looks like.