Interesting find
 

although Im not too sure what (if anything) to make of it.

last week I installed an idiot light to let me know when the fan is running.
it works great, coming on only when it is supposed to.

but what i have since found that when at highway speeds, there id a slight glow to the bulb. It goes out when I slow down to city speeds.

my theory is that the fan starts to spin from the air moving thru the radiator and fan causing the motor to produce a slight amount of electricity.

Im guessing that this is back feeding into the system which would be a good thing, right?

any other ideas?

Thats exactly what it is. I have the same setup and i had my grille block off while modifying it. The resulting increased airflow had the fan going like a wind turbine. The power fed back into the system is virtually nothing but the led was fully on which was took a bit of getting used to. Just shows how much cooling engines get: too much! I now have an opening of about 3" by 14" and the led only comes on when the fan comes on.

ollie

Yea, I have the upper grill blocked and just enclosed the bottom of the front of the car between the radiator bulkhead and front fascia. Forcing the air thru the rad.
My next step is to close of some of the lower grill opening.

BBsGarage -

That's a cool find (ha ha, I made a pun). Do you think it was providing any "juice" back into the battery?

Obviously, the losses would outweigh the gains, but we have speculated, "what if" we put "mini windmill" fans at strategic locations on the front of our cars in order to get a little bit of "free juice".

CarloSW2

I speculated the same thing. Got the idea from seeing the guys over at otherpower.com do their various projects. All homebrew technology. Their forum website is the Otherpower.com Discussion Board || Make your electricity from scratch! and has all types of homemade wind turbines and motors and alternator's modified into permanent magnet alt's.

Neat site for the DIY'er with a little handy streak in them. In the 4 or 5 years I've been visiting that site, some of the folks there just never cease to amaze me.

Based purely on how dim the bulb is verses when it is fully lit, i'd venture a guess of only 6-8 volts being generated.

when I get a chance Id like to put a meter on it just to see.

Interesting discovery!

I wonder if this guy's LED comes on...

http://otherpower.com/images/mod_A_wind_test.JPG

(Blister's link reminded me of this pic...)

Haha. Yeah, those guys do that a lot. A poor man's wind tunnel for testing their turbines.

There's probably a relay somewhere to supply power to the fan. You should tap the control signal of the relay instead.

My LED does the same thing. I think it means I can start blocking my lower grill a little.