New Fan
The Westfield has been in the garage for a few days. Chasing cooling problems – again. This time it seemed to be the motor for the radiator’s fan. It was occasionally conking out when it got hot. That’s not when you want it to quit. The intermittency made it challenging to track down with the temperature swings we get this time of year in New England. I eventually got smart and used a heat gun on it. It wasn’t too surprising since it was 35 years old.
As long as I was replacing it, I decided an upgrade was in order. I hadn’t felt too sure that the Miata fan was up to the job since I put the fancy new radiator in six years ago. So I sprang for a nice new one from an Italian company called SPAL. Here’s the old one:
and here’s the new one:
Of course it’s a totally different size and shape. That meant I needed to fabricate some new brackets for it. I finished making those and reinstalling everything this morning.
It certainly moves some air! I’ll have to find somewhere to get stuck in traffic when the weather gets hot again to see how it performs.
