Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
Coolant the engine is discharging vs. radiator outlet temperature.
A resistor is a lot less than $200 and cant burn out.
If you spend $200 plus the cost of the pump which is in the $160 to $500 range the part about the mod being economical is long gone.
I am sticking with resistors.
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A PWM controller doesn't cost 200, if you're paying 200 you're doing something wrong. A resistor on something like a pump can easily be burning 10, 20 watts or so, I'd rather spend the extra 10-20 bucks to build a real PWM controller. Having a hot resistor sitting in the engine bay near plastic/rubber components such as the coolant hoses doesn't seem like a good idea.
Google "simple pwm controller" and you'll see what I mean by 10-20 dollars. It's probably even less than that. Actually, if you don't want to build it from scratch, you could just get a single channel PWM controller for computer fans, pull the circuit out and attach a larger transistor, and then a capacitor for power smoothing so you don't accidentally kill the pump just in case it's not meant for PWM. It would run you maybe 15-20 dollars over just simple resistors, and the 10-20W it saves over the resistor would pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time.
Heck, people don't use rheostats to control computer case fans anymore, nevermind something as powerful as a pump suitable for a car engine, because of heat management and the risk of burning out the resistors/transistors/voltage regulators from overheating. I've personally had a resistive fan controller burn out within minutes.