The last time I drove, it was only about 80 degrees F outside but my coolant temperature felt uncomfortably high. I know the gauge probably isn't too accurate and I was probably worrying too much but I still felt that a cooling fan upgrade was in order. The 308 cooling system is not that great to begin with and the OEM Lucas fans are less than awe inspiring. The cheap Lucas fans used bushings that would expand when heated, seizing the fan shaft when you need cooling the most. A few years ago, one of my fans failed completely and was replaced with a Spal A48-12S. I decided to get rid of the mismatch and replace them both with Spal 30100320 pusher fans. A lot of 308 owners have had good luck with these fans so I thought I'd give it ago. They supposedly move more air than the OEM fans and draw less current. The only downsides are that they don't look OEM and they require some work to adapt them to the OEM fan motor mounts.
Here's a shot of the old fans in situ. There are mounting straps that clamp around the fan motors holding them in front of the A/C evaporator/radiator. The fan on the right is OEM and the Spal A48-12S is on the left. Like everything else on this car, access is tight but I was able to do this by going through the front grille slot and under the hood.
The first thing was to figure out how to mount the new fans. The center of the new fans line up with the centers of the old fans so it's a matter of making a "can" to fit into the OEM mounting bracket. Someone on eBay is selling a kit to adapt the new pancake fans while other people have gone the DIY route and used L brackets and their old motor shells. This seemed like a fairly simple fabrication job with some 3/16" steel plate and a section of 3" OD exhaust pipe.I started off by cutting two 3" long sections of the pipe.
Then I cut two 3" diameter circles from the steel plate. I also removed the metal plate from the new fan and cut two pieces to match.
The round pieces were welded to the pipe.These now formed "motor cans" that would fit the OEM mounting brackets.
The new Spal fans had a center protrusion and wiring and I cut out some reliefs to accommodate. To make the new cans look sort of like the originals, I decided to use outer bolt holes to hold everything together and a bolt in the center to look like the OEM motor shaft. The outer bolts are sections of 1/4" allthread with nuts welded on the plate on the inside and locknuts on the outside. The center is a 5/16" piece of allthread.
Here's the new fan next to the old fan. At first glance, I think the new one looks like the old one.
Here's the final product, painted silver. I even tapered the center shaft and cut a slot in it to look like the original.
Everything is mounted up and looking good. I have not tested it yet on the road but I'm hoping this will really help on those warmer days.
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