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Old 06-27-2008, 11:49 AM   #7 (permalink)
ttoyoda
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Gee, if a truck fan consumes a minimum of 16 HP then my little pickup fan may consume a whole 1 HP perhaps instead of the 0.11 HP I was calculating. But, I wonder if my clutch actually ever engaged.
Well maybe 8 hp, but I would guess more than 1.
I thought the fluid clutches spun the fan all the time, but sometimes they spun it more and sometimes less? On the schoolbus (ha I used to drive one when I was in high school) does the fan have a clutch like an AC compressor does? Where it is locked up hard OR completely free?
The other way you could test the fan HP is to mount that old fan on an electric motor that you have set up as a dyno (you let the motor pivot on an arm, and measure the force the arm pushes with using a scale. This force * the length of th arm is torque. Then multiply by rpm to get hp) Then run the motor at diffrent speeds and you will get the curve of fan power VS rpm.
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