Heya folks. I got the FM stage 1 fan kit. It consists of two spal fans and their radiator shroud for the crossflow rad.

I wired both fans in parallel and hooked em up to the cooling fan (deleted AC fan control, kept AC).

Looks like I burnt up the original fan relay! I'd read that people have wired fans in parallel without issue but perhaps the spal fans drew too much current.







It looks like the actual switch melted the exterior shell (charred black plastic), and stuck to it. Tried running the relay off of a power supply and no click. Busted it open and now it switches.

What are you running? is this a fluke, or do I need a high power relay in the engine bay? My instinct is to replace this one and see if it goes bad again.

 

What's the part number on the spal? It should be easy to find. Google it, it'll give you an amperage rating. The ones I'm seeing are in the 25amp range. x2 is 50amps, and on start up they'll draw more. I know on PDM I just programmed, a "15amp" Spal drew 40+amps briefly on start up, yours probably closer to 50amps each. So you're running ~100amp in-rush, and ~50amps constant.


That relay is supplied with a 30amp fuse.

 

That's precisely why I'm a little surprised here. The fuse is intact and is the original 30A fuse. The OEM relay (or at least what's in my car) is only rated to 15A, which seems low for even the original radiator fan.

It's two spal va10-ap50/c-61a fans. On their website they cite a 25A fuse but no continuous current draw. If it was drawing significantly more I'd expect my 30A fuse to have blown especially with two of them in parallel.

 

Arguing why the relay blew up instead of the fuse is sorta like arguing if the gun or the bullet killed the deer. Replace the relay with new, wire only a single fan to it, then wire a second aftermarket 30/40a relay to be triggered by the first fan turning on.

 

I replaced it with a new relay and all is well. I don’t expect it to last long, just enough until I switch over to brushless motor control and re-do most of the wiring. We’ll see if it makes it, the old one lasted 4 months

 

Have you ever heard of something called fire?