{"id":41840,"date":"2010-03-09T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGAR2020\/?p=41840"},"modified":"2010-03-09T00:00:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:00:25","slug":"mga-cooling-fan-shroud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/mga-cooling-fan-shroud\/","title":{"rendered":"MGA Cooling Fan Shroud"},"content":{"rendered":"

VOL 22\/NUMBER 2<\/h4>\n

The MGA cooling fan shroud is designed and built by Dan Beha of Akron, Ohio. Dan spent a lot of time perfecting the design, but the end result is very simple and apparently very effective. The installation on my MGA took less than 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

The accompanying photographs shows that the shroud comes in two halves for easy installation. To attach them on the car, they are sandwiched between the radiator and its mounting, and secured by the six bolts that hold the radiator in place. The upper and lower holes of each half are slotted so that only the center radiator mounting bolt on each side needs to be removed, while the upper and lower bolts are merely loosened.<\/p>\n

The initial step of the installation is to loosen the upper and lower bolts on each side of the radiator, and to remove the center bolts. The radiator can then be carefully pushed or pried forward to create a gap between the radiator and its mounting. The shroud is installed in this gap. There should already be a fiber packing piece between the radiator and its mounting, and it would probably be preferable to create the gap to mount the shroud between the packing piece and the radiator. In my case, the packing piece stuck to the radiator flange and I did not think that I could separate it without destroying it. So I installed my shroud between the packing and the body flange.<\/p>\n

The half that is installed on the right side of the car is installed first, and is the most tricky because of the location of the top radiator hose and the generator. By following the directions and with a little jiggling and patience, it can be maneuvered into place. This is accomplished by inserting it upside down on the left side, and rotating it around the fan so that it comes up on the right side the right way up. There are a few sharp edges on both the shroud and the car, so a pair of gloves might preclude a few skinned knuckles and minor cuts.<\/p>\n

Once the right side is in place, the middle radiator bolt can be installed loosely to keep it there. The left side is a little easier to install as there is not much in the way. When both sides are in place, all six bolts can be tightened. Make sure that the shroud is centered around the fan and snug against the radiator mount at both sides.<\/p>\n

\"\"The photographs show, as best I could, the completed installation. The whole thing is so unobtrusive that it was difficult to photograph it in place. The shroud halves are made from galvanized sheet metal, and should be painted (black) before installation. I left mine unpainted so that it would show up in the photograph, but it did not help much.<\/p>\n

Well, so much for the installation, but is it effective? Unfortunately, with winter coming on, I did not have the driving weather to do a meaningful before and after comparison. However, Dan Beha provided the following write-up of his experience while validating the effectiveness of his design.<\/p>\n

\"Shroud
Shroud installed-hardly noticeable when painted black<\/figcaption><\/figure>“Hot weather arrives. The outside temperature is about 94 degrees. I was working in the garage, which is even hotter, and the shroud is off. The car is running at idle, and becomes dangerously hot in about 15 minutes. I shut it off. Quickly I installed the shroud and started the car. After 30 minutes at idle, the car showed no sign of overheating and was running just above the normal operating temperatures. On the road the car showed some interesting things. At 50 mph and less, with the shroud installed, the car ran much cooler. The interior of the car was not hot. At highway speeds of 60 mph and above, I don’t think it makes much difference whether the shroud is on or off. The reason for this, I think, is the “ram-air” due to the higher rate of speed. At lower speeds, and at idle, a shroud installed around a fan makes the fan more efficient by moving air through the radiator. Without the shroud, a lot of the air that the fan is moving is the air that is already in the engine compartment, which reduces engine cooling\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dan’s experience is what I would have expected. The shroud should have the most noticeable effect when the engine is idling, or the car is moving slowly just the conditions one experiences when in traffic. Under these conditions, the engine cooling is relying entirely on the amount of air the fan can pull through the radiator. The shroud improves this process by ensuring that the air pulled by the fan is drawn through the entire surface area of the radiator. The shroud provides a ducting effect, which improves the efficiency of the fan operation. At higher speeds, however, the speed of the car actually pushes the air through the radiator at a faster rate than the fan can pull it. Therefore, the shroud and fan contribute nothing additional to the cooling process. If your MGA is prone to overheating on the open highway, then the shroud will not help. If it is prone to overheating in downtown traffic on a hot summer’s afternoon, then the shroud should make both you and your engine more comfortable. If you think you or your car can benefit from one of Dan’s fan shrouds he is selling them through Medina Motorsports, Inc., of Medina, Ohio. They can be contacted at 800 700-7057, or 330 225-8026. The cost is about $40.00, plus shipping (and now available from Moss).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOL 22\/NUMBER 2 The MGA cooling fan shroud is designed and built by Dan Beha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-tech-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/namgar.com\/NAMGARMAIN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}