'35-'36 W/8BA Fan

[V8COOPMAN]

Click the link below for an expose with details and pictures of a mechanical fan that Heard and I designed and fabricated for his '36 3-window coupe with an 8BA. PM me for a few more pictures, or additional details. DD
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Our old friend Heard near Daytona, Florida has a cool little '36 3-window that some of you may remember from previous threads.





It has an 8BA in it, and it HAD an ugly, somewhat inefficient electric fan strapped to the rear side of the radiator when he bought the car. He wanted to get rid of the electric fan and come-up with a mechanical fan that would bolt-on to the 8BA, yet clear the rearward-slanted radiator found in '35s and '36s. So, we began to scratch our collective asses for a solution. Just so happens that I noticed a picture of the front of the 8BA in Jim Pullen's (19Fordy) beautiful '40 coupe. That picture showed a bracket that wasn't familiar to me, so I asked Jim what it was. Several years before, Jim had MANUFACTURED that bracket from scratch to hold a fan that would fit below his upper radiator hoses, yet also clear everything else that might get in the way.

Jim's bracket below:





Of course, Jim also came-up with the bearings and the other hardware necessary, as well as machining the fan hub/pulley parts to make it all work......beautiful craftsmanship!

So with that little homemade fan carrier bracket in mind, my wheels started turning. I came-up with a key (secret) element in the "Heard Fan" design which was the fan hub/bearing assembly out of an old Chevy Corvair. Yup, they were air-cooled with a big fan on top of the engine.








Heard procured a NOS Corvair hub and we started designing/fitting pieces from there. He mocked pieces from wood and fitted directly on the car. Heard eventually came-up with a full-sized, mocked-up wooden bracket. For the few folks that are thinking- "This is way too much trouble to go to for a fan"...Heard drove all the way over to Tampa and bought this Linley Jig Borer just to do the whittling! From there, he whittled (machined) the solid bracket to hold the Corvair fan hub. As you can see below, the bracket mounts to a '42-'48-ish fan bracket which bolts-on to the slide adjustment bolt on the front of the 8BA intake manifold. The pulleys are store-bought items. The alternator pulley drives the fan, if you're wondering. Heard had to carefully trim the angles and width on the rear slot of a double-belt alternator pulley, to accommodate the wider belt for the flathead. Ratios and pulley diameters were carefully considered from start to f
inish. It all worked-out really well, as this rig cools his 8BA very well on hot Florida summer days, while maintaining about 5/8" clearance between top of fan and the radiator. DD

The Linley in action:





Heard's rig below:







Installed and operational below:





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