Okay, so I spent some time under the hood of my car, wrenching, when I noticed how restrictive the fans (in particular, fan shrouds) are in my car.
Unlike longitudinal V8s, my radiator is close-up against the engine. As a result, the "shroud" around the radiator for the cooling fan is < 1" from the fins!
Now, the issue is that for effective cooling, one needs both high pressure and an open low pressure area to "encourage" the high-pressure air through. If there's an obstruction just aft of the radiator, much of the air will treat the rad as "solid" and just flow around vs through.
This makes me wonder if one could just scrap the fans altogether and use a spray bar, as on certain intercoolers. This would seem to encourage flow, and the principle is known to work...or they wouldn't bother using it with intercoolers.
I hope I'm not travelling well-trod ecomodder trails, but a search came up empty. I figure I could give this a "trial run" just by tapping into the washer lines--hit the squirter as a test and see if I get a coolant temp. drop. (In a finished system, I'd have a separate system, with the "fan" electrics flowing to a washer pump...sounds like a junkyard trip to me!)
A further search of the entire internet shows this system to be occasionally used by off-roaders as a supplement to the stock fans in high power/low speed scenarios.
If I wind up doing this, I'll report back, possibly with pics.