After a few morning shopping activities for tomorrow and getting our new Miele dishwasher installed, well nearly installed, our cavity is about 2mm to narrow and it won't go in, so Miele will send a cabinet maker over next week to alter the cavity so it does fit, free of charge, god love Miele. Anyway after this I bolted over to Eastern Creek to pick up my fan hub. Here's the new verse old, bigger more agressive fan and a much bigger hub.
Now to install it, 4 bolts I thought, well how wrong was I... First take the adaptor plate off and bolt this to the pully (the 4 bolts, then bolt the fan hub to the adaptor plate (4 unbelievably short nuts, but do able), then bolt the fan to the hub (4 more bolts). Doesn't sound too bad, but trying to work this out the first time with no instructions and to do it you actually need to disassemble the hub/adaptor plate from how it was shipped. Here's the fan and hub in position.
I slipped the radiator in (Rapid Cool 3 core) just to check some clearances, all good, about 40mm (or more accurately half a finger) to the radiator.
Radiator out, fan shroud in and then radiator back in. This step was definitely a major pain in the arse to do, I had many goes at it and couldn't make it work. After a few calls back to UFI (interupting there Xmas drinks - cudos to them for even answering) I confirmed the order of the step, which is what I was doing, I just obviously need to hold my tongue differently. So I enlisted the help of my apprentise aka the missus and we got it in pretty easily really. Probem was as I stood in front of the car on my stool holding the radiator and sliding it in, I could see behind it to line things up and manipilate as required.
To all those that say these fans don't fit with anything other than the standard 2 core alloy radiator, I say try a bit harder
I was pretty excited to get this far, as the rest was all down hill from there. Hook up the 2 radiator hoses, overflow hose, put the bottom of the shroud on, airbox to turbo pipe work in, VDO temp sensor in, 2nd battery in, intercooler back on. Bit of an issue here as the Cross Country intercooler frame now hits the new radiator, so with a bit of a bend here and there, it now clears the radiator. Drilled a new hole in the radiator support panel, put a 8mm nutsert in and bolted the newly positioned intercooler support frame into position. Filled it up with cooland and job done!!
Checked for tools, then fired it up. All good. There is definitely more vibration and low down resonance with the Superior mount, at first it was terrible, although after taking it up to the shops and back it settled down a bit. You can still definitely hear and feel it, it's quiet a low frequency rumble and vibration. Once over about 1,800 rpm you dont notice it anymore. I'm also pleased to find out the TD tick tick tick is largely gone and replaced by fan noise, but not a windy fan noise, it kinda makes it sound smooth and more car like, wierd to explain. I did notice that my VDO temp gauge didn't really go beyond 65-70 deg so I'll have to see how that goes. The gauge light is also very dim also, job for later.
So overall pretty happy with how it turned out. New gerabox mounts, engine mounts, thermostat, radiator, fan, fan hub, belts, coolant, oil, oil filter, fuel filter. Big few days.