Cooling

Engine cooling

This is the area, where the stock setup will serve even a mildly modified truck IMHO. The only change, what every one should do is to replace the stock 195F thermostat with a 160F one. I had good luck with the Robertshaw thermostats. * Early 2003 I was forced to look around for the different cooling options. My stock fan came off from the water pump, went ballistic, destroyed the shrouds and the radiator too. So I made a little leg work around this topic and you can read the result here. * One of the most popular upgrades cooling wise is to replace the stock water pump with a high performance aluminum one. The two most popular units are Edelbrock #8881 and Stewart Stage II #23123. Both units are made from aluminum, so a little weight reduction come with them too. The Stewart requires a special thermostat, which is a modified Robertshaw unit.


An other quite popular upgrade is to get rid of the stock mechanical fan and clutch and get an electric fan setup. Sometimes this upgrade is required if you switch to an air-to-air intercooler. In this case you should realize that the stock system is very powerful, I only know one electrical fan, which can reproduce the stock flow numbers so far. This fan is a Ford one, it was installed on 95' Ford Taurus 3.8L and on Lincoln Mark VII 92'-98'. Possibly on other models too. This is a monster fan with reported flow numbers in the 5000 CFM range. Depending on your setup you can go away with different fans, or dual fan setups, but this unit is a sure bet.


* It has one downside, its high electrical demand. Some people are reporting it's drawing 50 amp at startup, but I couldn't measure more than 37 amps at startup and around 18-20 amps at full speed. Anyway a new generator is in order.


You can use different methods to control this fan. I recommend to use a heavy (8 gauge) cable (with a 50-60 amp fuse) directly from the battery to the fan and a similar ground cable from the fan to a 70 amp relay. To switch the relay you can use a manual switch, you can hardwire it (I don't recommend it because of the stress it will put on your battery at startup) or you can use a therm switch. However a rather elegant way to control it is with the ECM. You can use the IC pump circuit to do this after adjusting the switch-on temp in your bin. You should hardwire your IC pump anyway... * Radiator upgrades. There are a lot of different aluminum radiators out there. However the number of direct replacement options are quite limited. The stock radiator has a tranny oil cooler and an engine oil cooler integrated into the endtanks. So if you want a absolutely direct replacement with better cooling capacity you have only one option. It's a mega bucks unit from Griffin for $880 plus the brackets. Beside this you can get a a BeCool unit with no engine oil cooler, tranny cooler is your option. It's a drop in replacement for ~$500. But you have to fabricate your own oil cooler setup... * All the other options needs custom fabrication. Also most of the standard size radiators are either 27" long (significantly smaller than stock, no reason to do it), or 19" height, which won't fit with the stock front clip. That's it. So after my little accident I got a new stock unit. So far so good... My coolant temps with the stock radiator, Ford fan on high speed all the time, 160F thermo, Stewart pump never exceed 163-165F, even stucked in a traffic jam, in high 80's, summer time. *

Engine oil cooling

As I've mentioned above, we have a stock oil cooler integrated into the driver's side endtank of the radiator. Also we are using a remote oil filter, well away from the engine. BTW the house of the oil filter has an unused port, which is an excellent point to install a temp probe for an oil temp gauge. With the stock setup there is a very close relation ship between your oil temp and water temp. With my 160F water temps the oil temp are never go above 170-175F. I guess you can lower this, but I can't see why. According to common sense these are well below the said to be 210F threshold... * Anyway with a custom rad setup you have no other option, but creating a separated oil cooler. You can mount it in the front, plenty of space there. You should use -10AN lines, and prepare the remote filter housing to accept them. That's all. * I'm talking about tranny cooling on my tranny page. Also * Typhoons came with a steering oil cooler. I'm not addicted to curvy roads and road racing, so that kinda upgrade is out of scope for me... * One more remark cooling wise. The removal of the AC radiator could help big time... ;-) *