All,

Was reading here and there on mods for Toyota's and saw a fan replacement somewhere. Has anyone replaced their stock fan with a lightweight aftermarket one?

It is cheap to do and was wondering if anyone has any comments on this? More air, more HP, no change??

I have a 97 3.4L by the way.

Thanks,
CB

 

See this thread:

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/show...&threadid=3427

Dr. Z

 

Yeah, I saw that and went to the linked site and checked it out. Seems like a good idea, just curious if it worth the $$ or time for the NA 4Runners out there?

Thanks,
CB

 

There are some reviews of the install on the web. You will most likely get better gas mileage and an improvement in torque. The torque improvement is due to the removal of about 13lbs from the end of your engine, not to mention the parasitic drag of the fan blades themselves. Flex-A-Lite does not make a Flex Fan for our engines, nor have I been able to find one.

I plan on installing the FLX-210 soon in my truck. I'll of course do a write up with pics and post them.

Peace.
Dr. Z

 

Here's a couple of write-ups:

http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~dneece/fan/fan.html

http://www.nsmfinance.com/toyota/flex.htm

These are from http://www.gadgetonline.com/Fan.htm fan write up.

The first two are on Tacomas, but you can still see what all is involved and get some more commentary about adding one.

Cheers!

 

Dr. Z,

Summit Racing had so many different "universal" ones, do any of them work for our 3.4L? I don't have the $$ to do an electric fan swap right now! Thanks!

http://store.summitracing.com/defaul...d%3D5%26s%3D94

CB

 

:pat:
I get it now, I thought you were talking electric, but am I right in thinking you want JUST a fan? If so, you'll have to go out and measure the one on your truck and see what size, etc. to find a replacement. I don't know how much this alone would improve things, myself.

 

Loosehead,
No worries! Yeah, I was thinking a $20-30 lightweight fan replacement to move more air and maybe add some torque? Seems cheap enough to do. If nothing else, might keep engine cooler under higher RPM's. How does an electric fan help above a super light belt driven fan?

CB

 

Hey CB,

Like I mentioned, I couldn't find any Flex fans or non-clutch type fans for our engines. You might have better luck than I. One of the problems I ran into is Toyota uses a different bolt spacing on the water pump pulley than the US car companies.

The aftermarket lightweight fan manufacturers make fans to fit the standard bolt patterns. All of them that I talked to, inlcuding Flex-A-Lite (the most popular manufacturer), said that their fans would NOT fit on our trucks.

Good Luck in your search. Personally I'd save the money for the FLX-210.

Dr. Z

 

Dr. Z,

That makes sense and thanks for the bolt info. Like I said, I was just thinking about this, and was curious if it could be done.

CB

 

a belt driven fan is still a belt driven fan. what makes it so heavy is the clutch. separate the clutch from the fan and you'll see that the fan doesn't weigh but a couple of pounds, whereas the clutch weighs about 10. you will not be able to notice a difference in HP by buying a lighter fan.

the electric fan rids the engine of having to turn this extra weight, which frees up the horsepower. i bought a universal fan from a parts store that attaches to the radiator by passing plastic rods through the radiator. i wired the fan using a relay and a thermostat that i also bought from the parts store. the whole project cost me $100. i've had the fan for almost a year now and i haven't had any problems yet. the kicker is that the fan i bought was rated to cool an engine with a displacement range from 2.4-3.0 liters. since your engine is a 3.4, you might have a harder time finding a fan strong enough to cool it. but it certainly doesn't hurt to look.