cool
Dear Internet,
Today I re-wired the Atlima cooling fans inside the truck. Each of the two fans has four wires- one circuit for low speed, a second for high. Each set is supposed to run to a separate relay, for some kind of intelligent cooling management.
The F150 is many things, but intelligent it ain't. Today's work is a temporary fix, but the remaining issues are aesthetic, not functional. I wired all the circuits together and ran the mess to a continuous duty solenoid. The solenoid is rated at 80 amps, I've got a 60 amp fusible link on the thing and nothing's blown yet. I'd had Low speed wired up by itself for a while, but it was a really tenuous situation- one fan was grounded to the aluminum grille shell, while both were pulling power from a huge piece of 4ga audio cable. All the connections were wire nuts and electrical tape.
Things still aren't permanent (by a long shot), but everything's cleaned up and crimped... I even put a wee wire wheel on the Dremel, took it to a spare hole in the fender and brought it down to bare metal, then applied "Super Lube," and threaded a bolt through to use as a ground.
...of course, given that I'm completely broke & hadn't planned ahead, some half-assing did happen. I ran out of heavy gauge wire and ended up replacing the audio cable with three separate, thinner pieces- 1 12ga & 2 16; which if I've done my math right equals 10 + a fraction gauge, which should have a max amp load approximating that same 60a, it's around a 1.5 foot run, so that should be fine as a stopgap.
Ultimately the plan is to pull the relay/fusebox from a 90's era Taurus and mount that where the tire jack used to be, add a marine-grade fusebox in the cab, then run all new wires for both chassis & engine bay.
Test drive was pretty gratifying- given that I have the timing and carb working perfectly, I just couldn't get the temperature up high enough to actually test the fan on the road in 85-ish degree weather. Finally I had to stop in a parking lot and let it sit in gear. Fan did its job, not cooling as fast as I would have liked, but certainly fast enough. Next step will be wiring up the thermostatic control so I don't have to turn it on with a switch in the cab. That should be interesting, as I think I've lost the directions and there are a lot of colored wires.
I also crawled underneath & looked at the flexplate, but it took half an hour to get to two bolts, both of which seemed plenty tight. Seems like this is a two-person job, and I think ultimately will be a much bigger project involving dropping the transmission.