I thought it would be best to leave it alone. Maybe once the fan clutch goes ill think about doing it, but meanwhile I can look into the best fans and the best way to do it and most reliable, maybe two huge e fans, big enough that one could probably keep up but it would be a strain, that way if one should fail on me, the other can get me home. Or if my radiator went out, I could put a racing radiator or something in it and just use regular e fans.

 

Also I travel a lot in the truck, about 65% of the time the truck does the job of a Honda, 30% of the time it does the job of 3/4 ton, and 5% of the time it does the job of a jeep lol. But most of the time it gets me points to b, sometimes point a to b is 300 miles to Atlanta, but I was actually towing a trailer then. The truck regularly makes an 80 mile trip to auburn, and 30 mile trips to Montgomery. Even Walmart is 15 miles from my house. Even considered this past summer taking it to upstate New York where we have some family, we just didn't go. But I would hate to have troubles 1200 miles from home lol. So reliability is key, but freeing up some power and gaining an mpg or two would be nice, especially since I plan on rehearing it and would loose an mpg or two. I would come out even with a lot more powerful feeling truck. I get the e fans are reliable, I just questioned them in a 351 when they were designed for a 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder car.

 

Sucks to hear that, it makes sense it would help a little, but maybe not. I bet the smaller the engine, the more beneficial the fans are. I'm sure they are good in our trucks to, but for me specifically I'm questioning if its worth it. I'm sure the truck would feel a little bit more peppy. I can slightly feel the ac compressor turn on when going up a hill or something, don't feel it on flat land. I imagine the fan would be about the same. Like under drive pulleys, I thought about them for my truck but the decided against them. But again, I could be convinced otherwise.

 

I live in N Louisiana and our temps get to 100+ for weeks. I've been pulling allot lately and the truck has never pulled load and run cool before the e-fans. Several HD cooling fans later, I did the e-fans after Shoudust did his. You guys gotta find a salvage yard. Less than $25 for the e-fans to gain a good amount of power and better cooling. My 130a alternator was $12 at the salvage yard. Opened it up at the yard, checked the bearings and brushes and off I went to install it with a 30 day warranty. If it needs rebuilding, that's $75 with a lifetime warranty. Say I spend $37 total for a gain of at least a couple of mpg, more electrical output and a felt power gain. I grew up in an automotive shop. half the parts we used came from a salvage yard and were better than most of the parts from the store shelf. I guarantee that I made the $37 investment pay for itself in a week of driving 100 miles to work and 100 miles home from work. I don't recall seeing a negative review from any of us that have the e-fans installed.

Edit, forgot about the fan controller. Make that investment $54. I'm running the fans, a 200w ham radio, a 65w ham radio, a 300 w stereo amp, a 100 w jvc head unit, a 300w ham radio amp, two 6" 100w off road lights, two 55w rear work lights. With the headlights on bright, the 100w off road lights on, the 55w work lights on, the stereo and amp on I'm sitting at 13.4v. When the fans kick in, the volts drop to 12.5 for a split second and settle back in at 13.2v for the 30 seconds that the fans stay on. Again, that's only at idle or bumper to bumper traffic that they even come on. I'm on a 6 year old battery that I've let die a half dozen times after leaving the lighted rear view mirror turned on for three days and the battery is still kicking. On the earlier post I linked to, I posted all of my voltages at the time. The e-fans don't pull squat. I've tested and tested and posted lots of numbers for you guys to compare to and just can't find a negative in the setup.

 

I have done absolutely nothing to the truck sadly (other than tires and small exhaust mod). I think this is going to be the way to go then. Also, I have no clue where I got 3.73 from, I have no idea what's on there and I recall seeing 3.73 and that's what I wrote lol. So basically what I'm getting is it also might be worth my while, if I'm looking for MPG too, to lift the truck enough to get 33's or 35's under it??

 

What was your mpg gain? and what did you get the alternator out of? Can't I just have my alternator rebuilt and upgraded to 130 amp? I just thought about that. I'm not knocking the e fans, just been nervous of them, never know anyone around here that has a truck with e fans and tows a bit.

 

Im running 4.56 gears with 235" tires (about 29") in the winter (I have larger 33" for the summer). So you know nothing about overkill! Running a larger tire will compensate with running low gearing. The driveshaft is simply turning over 4.56 times for every one full rotation of the tire in my truck. You have to understand that putting in too much gearing like 4.88 or 5.13 then the the engine will turn over more quickly and with a small tire, thus burning more gas, you have to find a happy medium. Obviously it much more fun with low gearing and the tire shredding burnout power at every light but you'll notice the gas needle move quicker. These 5.0 engines produce next to no low end torque so for 31's I recommend 4.10 gearing but if your plan on moving to 33" and staying there, I recommend 4.56 gears.

Heres nifty chart that shows you the cruising speed RPM of your engine with what gearing and tire diameter. Remember Im running 4.56's on 29's!!! thats about 3500 RPM at cruising speed!! any higher and the engine would grenade! lol. The black is the optimal RPM you will want to be at for power and fuel efficiency.




For the exhaust I recommend the magnaflow Y-pipe, eliminates 1 Cat and replaces the other with a high a flow Cat, bung included for o2 sensor. Not sure if this will pass emissions though Surely will free it up!

Magnaflow 93307

 

The alternator was out of a late 80's early 90's town car. Direct swap for the 95 and I'm sure some other years of our trucks. My e-fans easily got me over the 19mpg hump to 21mpg. At least 2mpg. Yes, most alternator shops can convert an alternator to higher amperage. My problem with that is, a small case alternator pumping out higher amps with insufficient cooling. I think most all of our alternators, regardless of amperage are about the same size, so cooling should not be an issue. A rebuild for my '94 was $75. An amp kit from the 65a to 120a was $120. I didn't have all of the toys in my '94 that I have in my '95, so I left the alternator stock amperage. Keep this in mind too, my '94 was an Ext cab 5.0, way heavier compared to my swb reg cab 95. I've also got 2wd with 2.73 gears. Way better gas mileage on the highway, suffers a bit when towing. Your running a bigger engine, bigger truck. You will feel a gain with the e-fans. You may not see the mpg's that I see. I've modded the hell out of my truck along with regular maintenance and all synthetic fluids. I've had power gains, but more so mpg gains. In my long drive to and from work, that outweighed the towing need. I've driven my buddies 5.8 ext cab and running up and down hills, he could get better mpg's than my 5.0. It just fell flat on anything other than flat land. Just don't expect 21mpg with the 5.8.

 

If you want to lift the truck and put bigger tires on it, then yes you want to take that into consideration. With 33s consider 4.54 gears, 35s with 4.88s or so. The bigger tires change your overal gear ratio, so to compensate for it you change the differential gearing. If you have 3.55s now, 33s and 4.10 would perform about the same. 35s and 4.54 would be about the same. So you just go up a step numerically on the gears,to get an increase in performance. Putting oversized tire on hurt mpg mostly because of the change in overall gearing, so people swap out gears to compensate and get close back to stock performance and mpg, but putting bigger tires on and changing gearing doesn't automatically mean you get better than stock mpg. And obviously the bigger tires weigh more, are normally wider and drag more, lifted truck has worse aerodynamics, so that hurts mpg and power too, but the biggest thing is the way the tire size changes the overall gear ratio. So bigger tires and different gearing won't get better mpg then You get now and more power, but the gears would get you better mpg and power then if you have stock gears and bigger tires, (33s or above is more of what I'm talking about, not the little bit you did). Hope I'm clear in what I'm saying.

 

Nick: I actually have looked at that setup exactly, but I figured I can cut our both cats, weld in pipe in place of the front, and buy the high flow cat for the rear as a separate unit for $100 as opposed to $200 for the kit. Yes, that explanation makes sense. So where I am at right now, I have a little more fuel economy as compared to having 4.10 gear ratio, but my power is lower. The increase to 4.10 sacrifices some fuel economy for power?

Brandon and unit505: I haven't ever heard of an e-fan, but from reading what you guys have written, I'm lost as to how is brings you more power and increases the MPG, could you explain that a little?

Thanks to everyone for their input btw, it's appreciated!