Keeping your car cool is critical. Few things are worse for your engine than overheating. It’s nerve-wracking to see the temperature gauge soaring in traffic. Even worse, sitting on the side of the highway waiting for it to cool off is not only embarrassing, but potentially dangerous.

Recently, we covered the ins and outs of maximizing your street machine’s cooling system (story link here). We discussed everything from thermostats and coolant to radiators and fans with the folks from Prestige Motorsports, but we help you keep your car cool a step further with this article.

The fact is the average boulevard brawler makes way more power now than it did 25 years ago — sometimes three times what we ever thought possible — and people still want to drive them on the street.

Back in the day, if you had a 500 horsepower street car, you were pretty tough to beat. Today, OE manufacturers are offering 1,000-plus horsepower from the factory.

In this era of Drag and Drive and True Street-style events, 1,000 horsepower street cars are practically commonplace. Some vehicles, like Tom Bailey’s Sick Week Camaro, clock in at 4,000 or so ponies. It is not unusual to see serious street machines that produce 1,500 to 2,000 HP — and the owners also want to drive them hundreds of miles at a time, and with no compromises.

Fans are a hugely important part of this equation, and there is a lot of serious technology in today’s electric fans, so we reached out to the people at SPAL to learn as much as we can about them. SPAL is one of the largest names in the original equipment fan business, not only for automobiles, but trucks, tractors, and even military applications. This OE technology gave rise to its aftermarket business, which is international in scope.

To get the full scoop, we had a roundtable discussion with some of the folks from SPAL. This group was comprised of Thom Balistrieri, director of aftermarket sales, Tom Longo, North American aftermarket sales, Greg Goeders, OEM and aftermarket marketing manager, and Jared Long, application engineer.

The Business Of Aftermarket Fans

SM: What would you guys say has changed the most in the fan segment?

THOM BALISTRIERI: I’ve been with SPAL for 18 years, and within the last eight, I’ve really noticed that the consumers are becoming a lot more knowledgeable when it comes to cooling their cars. Plus, the new technologies that we came out with, with the brushless fans and stuff. But it just seems like there were a lot of old hot rod guys out there that are kind of going away, but the newer crowd that’s coming in is very knowledgeable about cooling cars.

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At left is a fan blade mold, at right is the motor housings coming down the production line.

SM: Do you think that’s because of the iInternet or are they just more knowledgeable in general?

TB: I think it is the internet.

Greg Goeders: Yeah, I think it’s a little bit of both, but I think social media plays a lot a large role in it because you can go on online to social media and you can see your favorite driver, see what their setup is, and you can just pick up that knowledge from there. It’s been amazing to see in the last five to 10 years how much has changed. Previously it was guys working on their hot rods in their garage that were exchanging notes and reading the magazines. Now everything’s right at your fingertips.

SM: I think the internet has cleared up a lot of misconceptions, but I still hear stuff — old wives tales — that have been out there forever. I think the internet has perpetrated a lot of those, wouldn’t you say?

TB: Yeah.

Tom Longo: Definitely. You can say anything on there, as we know. You look at some of the forums and stuff, and they’re pretty funny.

GG: You never know who’s posting it either because you’re behind the shield or mask of a keyboard. So, you know, one person can say something and say, “Oh, no, that fan is bad” or whatever. And I think with the forums and stuff, it’s a lot of personal experiences in terms of “this worked for me.” Well, that worked for you, but it might not work for this person. It’s a kind of a wealth of knowledge, but you never know what’s going to work for you individually.

SM: What’s the number one question that you guys get on your on your tech line or website?

Jared Long: “I have this fan, but I want it to be smaller and I need more CFM,” which is a silly question. There’s everything from that to “Am I wiring this right?” or “Why is my fan not turning on?” That’s the most common question — why is my fan not turning on.

GG: I was just going to say, too, I think systems are getting a lot more complicated because guys are running so many other components.

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This is what a brushless motor looks like before assembly (left). The magnets go in the channels around the perimeter. As you might imagine, there is a lot of automation in the SPAL factories (right).

JL: Absolutely.

GG: They’re running all these different things that need to be tied in together and sometimes with that stuff they kind of get their wires crossed.

TB: I think probably the biggest question that I get since SPAL doesn’t make any vehicle-specific fans, is, “What’s the best fan for my install? What size should I buy?” Everything we sell is universal. My answer to that question most of the time is just get the biggest one you can possibly put on there with the most power.

JL: That’s not a bad answer at all.

TL: Yeah, obviously, and cover the whole core. We really suggest using shrouds. A lot of guys don’t use shrouds. So, having that conversation between shrouding it and having a fan just right on the radiator. We tell them to try to cover as much of the radiator as possible. It’s universal, so, how much space do you have? And as we know in hot rods there’s not a lot of space between that last pulley and that radiator, so it gets very tight.

So guys are trying to cool 800-1,000 horsepower motors with two and a half inches of space [for the cooling system].

The SPAL headquarters in Correggio, Italy.

GG: Well, yeah. A lot of times, especially in the past, what I ran into at SEMA and PRI are people building these big engines and nice cars. They build it out and then they realize they have to fit a fan to cool it, and they are running out of space.

One of the things Tom Longo and I are really working on now is getting people to go to the manufacturer because they’re the experts. So, we’re really trying to build on that right now. We’re trying to get a more user friendly website and things like that to really become the cooling experts. We want people to come to us and ask us questions. We want to have as much information available to the end user as possible.

SM: The question I hear all the time is should I get a two core radiator or a three core radiator. And a three core radiator requires more fan to pull air through there. And again, if it’s a thicker radiator, you may not have enough room for the correct fan. Am I right?

TL: Yeah, it’s possible. I mean every inch counts. What you see is guys and gals are pretty creative. But the biggest thing is really educating them on the quality of the product because there’s a ton of fans out there and, you know, you can buy a Chinese fan from most manufacturers now. You go to AutoZone, you go anywhere, any auto parts store, the internet, you go to Amazon, but it’s really the quality of the product that they come back to.

When they use that $99 fan and it doesn’t cool, then they get on the internet, and they start looking for something better. That’s the real key.

That’s not to say that everybody buys the wrong one. Of course not. But there’s a lot of different questions — I mean everything from do you know the difference between brushless and brushed fans? Do you know there’s static pressure? If you look at small brushless fans, the beauty to it is its Pulse With Modulation — it only runs at the percentage that it needs. So, if you put a brushless 16-inch fan and you only need 50- 60 percent of that capacity, the fan only runs at 50-60 percent to cool your vehicle. And if it needs 100 percent, it goes to 100. So, PWM is a big thing.

SM: Thom B, you were telling me the other day that SPAL has one brushless fan in the test lab that’s been running non-stop for years now and it’s never failed.

TB: Yeah, we still have them running. The original ones are still running in the test facility in Italy. I mean it’s way past the 40,000- hour mark.

TL: Now, in the hot rod world, you know, maybe the brushed ones last forever because the car people don’t drive the cars that far [or often], but a lot of Chinese brushed motors, I mean, some of those could fail as low as 1,500 hours. Longevity is another advantage of brushless fans.

GG: I feel like brushless [technology] is being driven by the OEM side. Has been for years, and it’s now getting into the aftermarket. So everything kind of originates in the OEM, and then the aftermarket is like, “Oh, this is new. This is better.” You know, and some guys don’t need it, but they just want it because it’s new and better, you know? So, it’s kind of fun to see that sometimes.

Brushed Vs. Brushless Cost

SM: You mentioned cost — there’s a big difference in cost between brushed and brushless, isn’t there?

TB: Correct. It’s almost double when you buy the sensor and everything. You’re looking at almost double the cost, but now you’re looking at double the life. You’re looking at variable speed. And being that brushless is variable speed, it’s going to be a lot less power draw on your system. It’s not going to be working full-time all the time.

They [brushless] have what they call soft starts. When it turns on, it ramps up rather slowly, so you don’t get that big spike like you do with the regular brush fans when you turn them on. And they’re very quiet. The noise that you actually hear coming from the fan is the air flow going through the fan. The motors are actually totally quiet.

JL: There’s obviously differences from application to application. Sometimes a brushless fan is going to have to run just as hard as a brushed fan would. It’s going full time, and then you’re not actually getting to use the control in that case. But it’s obviously on a case-by-case basis.

SM: Do you guys still make brushed fans?

JL: Yes.

TB: Oh yeah.

JL: Lots of them.

TB: Right now we’re running about 50-50 — about 50 percent of our production is brushless.

SM: What do you say if somebody calls you up and says, “Hey, this is what I have.” How do you advise them to go either brushed or brushless? Is cost the number one factor or is it certain other factors.

TB: It’s really the application. It totally depends on the application.

TL: You know, the guys at PRI, right? They don’t mind paying the extra for a brushless fan. They want the best, right? They’re racing. They’re at that level. The guy building the $500,000 car does not care, but the average Joe probably does. The guy at the bottom level? Price may be in effect for him, but I think like Tom said, it’s the application really. I think what we’ve found is a lot of people just don’t seem to mind that extra price.

JL: Sometimes it even matters where they are in the country or where they are in the world. A guy who is in Canada isn’t going to worry as much about how hot it’s getting, right? But someone in California or Nevada, you’re going to worry about how hot just the average day temperature is.

Understanding CFM

SM: It is sad when guys pull up in their cars at a cruise-in just spewing coolant on the ground. Is there anything you would say to people, any advice about what not to do?

GG: We call it kind of the CFM myth. So, if a guy that goes into a shop to find a fan, and he sees the small fan for $200 and it’s rated at 1,500 cfm, and he sees Fan B that is $50 and it’s rated at 2,500 cfm, he’s going to say, “Well, I’m going to get that one. It’s bigger. It’s better. It’s cheaper.”

Well, it goes back to education. What amperage are they using to get that, if they even get it? And usually their CFM numbers are arbitrary. They’re free air numbers. There’s no resistance. Where our fans tend to excel is when they get that resistance from the core, when they’re stacked up there. They don’t have a dramatic drop off in performance like our competitors’ fans do. And we have all that information available online. They can see the different ratings at various static pressure levels and things like that.

So, I think one of the biggest things is do your research and educate yourself.

TB: They call that the PFA rating. You know what the PFA rating is? Plucked From Air.

TL: Yeah. I think that’s what they’re doing. Obviously, the Chinese ones, it’s just a guess. It’s just saying, “Hey, everybody else at 3,000. That seems to be a good number. I’m gonna put 3,000 cfm, you know, because it’ll sell stuff.” It doesn’t mean it’s the right product. It doesn’t mean it’s good.

GG: Realistically, we could put a 6,000 cfm rating on a fan and there’s no consumer that can test that and make sure it’s correct.

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SM: At what point do you go from one fan to two? Is that just a coverage thing? In some applications, you have to have two smaller ones because there’s not room for one giant one.

TL: Precisely. Yeah. If you have a 15-inch tall radiator and it’s 24 inches wide, one fan isn’t going to cover it, so two fans are better.

GG: Maximum core coverage.

SM: What about running a fan in front of the radiator? You sometimes even see one in front and one behind. Are they just masking some problem with their cooling system?

TL: Yeah, obviously it is not recommended to put one in front and one in back.

GG: It will actually start to cavitate.

TB: They cancel each other out.

GG: They’ll start to pull to each other and start to pull in on the radiator. So, you’ll start to get cavitation and stuff like that, so it’s definitely not recommended.

People always come up and ask, “What do you recommend, a pusher or puller?” It depends on your spacing, but typically a puller is going to be better because you’re not blocking that through-air.

TL: Of course, a puller is definitely better, but in a lot of applications the guy has no room, right? He uses a pusher and it can work very in some cases. But we always recommend a puller. And we recommend shrouds if they if they have enough space for a shroud obviously to cover the whole core.

SM: Other concerns?

TL: Wiring is a big thing. Connections are another one that is a big failure point, people using the cheapest butt connector, or, you know, a ring terminal and it’s just poor quality crimping and you see a lot of it. In a vehicle, an electric draw for amps for the electric fans could be the biggest draw, but the connection will get hot if it’s a bad connection and then it will melt. So use high quality wire, high quality connectors — that’s another big part of the equation.

JL: A thought: When we were talking about shrouds — just to think through — it very simply is if you just have the fan on there, the only part of the radiator that’s getting air through it from the fan is going to be the surface area of that fan. With the shroud, you’re basically forcing the fan to pull air through the whole radiator. That’s really the simple way to think about the benefit of that. Shrouds are generally a really good thing.

GG: Like I talked about before, the CFM myth. And educate yourself because numbers are arbitrary. Going back kind of full circle: if you have questions call us. We want to be known as the cooling experts. We want to be able to help you out and give you recommendations.

What we tell people is to give us their core dimensions, their applications so we know how much space we have to work with, and then we can make a recommendation based on that. As Jared said earlier, it might be two different fans because you might have a guy in Canada with the same car application and a guy in Florida. Well, we might recommend two different fans based on where they are geographically.

TL: I would stress quality and then touching on CFM is never a bad idea. So CFM, you know, talking about companies that build fans for OE’s that have wind tunnels, that design products around application-specific vehicles. That’s a big part of it.But don’t always just rely on CFM.

Amp draw is another one. Amp versus CFM. Let’s just say it says 3,000 cfm, and it says that it draws 15 amps. Again, it’s an impossible factor, right? If you look at SPAL’s fans, every single fan is rated per wind tunnel with static pressure, so you have a curve of static pressure.

GG: Along those same lines, everything on our aftermarket side was originally designed for OEM applications. We’re on everything from Lamborghini to Ferrari to Caterpillar, military, a lot of military applications. And that’s one thing you can’t do is fudge numbers for the government. If anything, we like to say our CFM numbers are advertised number are lower [than they are] because when you’re working directly with the OEMs, you can’t exaggerate anything.