I've gathered up most non running fiero's in my area in a 75 mile radius accumliating as many as 17. I've been selling them off and i'm down to 7 when today i went to check for rust in a '85 GT i have in "The Mall" by pulling back the carpet on the right side of the trunk bay when i found a factory looking fan device that would seem to blow on the altenator. Of all the fiero's i've owned, i've never came across this and must of missed its picture in my repair manuals.How common is this option? In my defense, i've only pulled back the trunk carpet on about 4 or 5 of the fiero's i've checked for rust by potential owners.Just when you think you know alot about fiero's........ jesse
[This message has been edited by possumlips (edited 05-14-2008).]
i've only sold and looked under the trunk carpet of one V-6 now that i think of it. It was a '86 SE but it didn't have the fan.But now that i think even more about it, it was MstangsBware that looked the car over for the guy, not me ,so maybe it did have one.LOL.
[This message has been edited by possumlips (edited 05-14-2008).]
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11:18 AM
Oreif Member
Posts: 16460 From: Schaumburg, IL Registered: Jan 2000
It is only on the 1985 thru 1987 V-6 cars. It was not used on the 1988 V-6 Fiero's.
Guess GM figured out it didn't do much as well and removed it.
They also changed/improved heat shielding in '88 according to what I've read on the whole "fan" being deleted issue. The '88 alternator is smaller and has heat shielding, and the crossover has different shielding as well. I realize many on here know this- just throwing it out there due to the discussion at hand. ( :
They also changed/improved heat shielding in '88 according to what I've read on the whole "fan" being deleted issue. The '88 alternator is smaller and has heat shielding, and the crossover has different shielding as well. I realize many on here know this- just throwing it out there due to the discussion at hand. ( :
That is correct. Everyone assumes because it doesnt blow an astronomical amount of air and keep the componets cool to the touch, its useless. It really does help, its not a matter of keeping the componets cool to the touch, but at a relatively lower tempature. I actually thought the ignition side pipe was blowing at the coil, maybe it does kind of hit both. I know one car I was having troubles on the highway, not to far into a 100 mile trip, the coil started overheating and would cause the car to miss and be undriveable. This is at highway speeds! Anyway, after pulling over to let it cool twice, I rewired the fan to run constantly with key on. From that point I never had another problem, on the rest of that trip, or ever again with the coil on that car. This tells me it does in fact do something.
As he said, they were removed in 88 not because they were deemed to be useless, but because there were improvements in the 88. The pre88 Y pipe heat shield was nothing more than a "umbrella" that kind of kept heat from wanting to go up. 88 received insulated fully wrapped shielding, which was an extreme improvement from before, which reduced the amount of external heat the coil recieved. The alternator was a better design and had better cooling built into it. So the fan was no longer needed.
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12:10 PM
PFF
System Bot
spark1 Member
Posts: 11159 From: Benton County, OR Registered: Dec 2002
My 2 cents is that my 87 still has its original alternator and the 87 has the cooling fan. I've replace the alternator three times in my 88 with no cooling fan.
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05:00 PM
GKDINC Member
Posts: 1812 From: East Tawas MI Registered: Dec 2001
I seem to recall someone saying that the aux fans also had their polarity wired wrong from the factory, and reversing the wires helped improve performance of the thing.
I don't remember when or where I saw that, save that I saw it here somewhere.
FWIW--which ain't much.
Ed
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08:21 PM
BlackGT Codde Member
Posts: 1107 From: Gallup, New Mexico Registered: Mar 2008
wow i never would have guessed what those tubes were and i tried looking everywhere here i just thought that they were cutoff pieces of a 4cyl and someone dropped a v6 in there. i guess ya learn something new everyday. i wonder if mine is working though