Junkyard dual electric fan install

[craiginaustin]

I've been getting a lot out of this forum recently, so I figured a good way to contribute back would be to share some details of my electric fan install.

The PO of my truck had done an electric fan conversion, but a pretty poor one. The fan was jammed in front of the radiator, between it and the X-shaped brace behind the grill. I couldn't for the life of me get it re-installed after I put the radiator back in; plus the fan was powered straight from the +12V ignition source in the fuse panel through a toggle switch in the cabin, rather than using a relay, so I decided to start from scratch.

I headed to the junk yard, fully intending to pull the Taurus or a Mark VIII fan setup that seems to be pretty commonly used. I decided to do a lap through the "GM Trucks" section to see if I could come across anything that would work. While most of them were engine-driven fans, I came across a 2006 Saturn Vue that had an assembly that looked like it would work. Someone had already cut away the sheet metal above the radiator and fan + shroud, so access was really easy.

It turned out to be exactly the same size as the radiator, with the shroud covering all of the fins. I think I have a stock V8 radiator (but honestly don't know). We dug some L brackets from the junk drawer and attached the shroud to the stock metal on either side of the radiator. We had to use the Dremel to remove one of the tabs on the shroud that would've hit the battery tray, and drill some new holes in the other tabs on the shroud, but the modifications were really minor.

To power them, I pulled a fuse + relay panel from a mid-90's Cavalier. All the GM cars of that era seemed to have the same panel. I re-wired it inside to have two of the big relays to receive +12 V ignition on one side of the control circuit, then grounded through a switch on the other. I only have one fan hooked up for now, using the switch that was in the cabin previously. I just picked up a dual-circuit switch from NAPA (part number FS151) and a metric to NPT adapter that I'll swap in the next time I have to drain the coolant.

It seems to be working great. Sitting at a set of lights it keeps the truck at 190-200F, isn't overly loud with the one fan that I have hooked up running, and is fairly subtle under the hood.