What about leaving the pusher fans and adding the shrouds and such?

 

well by shrouds i meant all of the under bumper plastic pieces that channel the air to the radiator, I believe that was the majority of the problem, i'd like to get rid of the stock fans to clear up some more room under the hood, What I'm asking is do you think i can still keep the car cool by running pushers or some sort of combo of both. I'd like to keep it down to 2 fans, i don't know why they would put 4 on there to begin with.

 

I still have the washer reservoir & those plastic pieces between the bumper & radiator off of mine. I do have the spoiler piece in place to direct air up to the radiator opening, and have read that if this is missing you will overheat on the road. It has been my experience as documented in this thread that the aftermarket fans just don't work as well as the stock ones. I am in a hot area (FL) as is Highlander (PR). I'm not sure where you are.

My cooling mods at this point are:
1. Be Cool radiator
2. 160 thermo
3. Added weatherstrip top & bottom of fan shroud
4. 11" pusher in front of AC condenser on driver side

I have a B&M supercooler oil cooler in the same place on the passenger side.

I still have the bumper reinforcement in place, but had to trim it for the FMIC and also cut two 5" holes to connect hoses to the foglight openings.

In my experience, there is no way pusher fans alone can keep your motor cool enough unless you remove the AC condenser so they are blowing air directly into the radiator. I am running two pushers on my 1996 Bonneville (more room up front than the TA) since it has a really thin (5/8") radiator and it ran hot from day one. They help, but it will still see 210+ gauge temp on a hot day at idle.

I needed my AC so I had to do something else.

As Geoff pointed out a few posts back, not only do you have to get cooler air through the radiator, you have to get it out of the engine bay. The slope of the radiator helps with this, but the ATI IC placement for the most part is right where this air needs to exit, and then you have to factor in the hot air from the IC entering the engine bay.

In your case, based on what you have stated, I would add a Be Cool radiator and do whatever was needed to keep the stock fans. ATI makes mention in their install manual for the P600B something about modifying the fans for more room (if I remember right, they shim them forward, but I think this is where I added to my problems with the Perma Cool fans- too close to the radiator), you can probably do this if needed.

BTW, got the front end aligned and aside from a few tuning issues, the car runs great!

 

Good to hear your success in getting the car running.

I hear you on the pusher/puller fan issue - they are designed differently, so you'd figure somehow that they'd accomidate for these things... Anyway. If you look up from the bumper and air dam at my ac condenser, you will notice that there is nowhere for the air to go but into the radiator. That was excessivly intentional, and I spent a bit of time working on this. I did NOT add additional flow from the fog light areas, reason being is that it disturbs the air flow in, where ducting was done from the factory rather well. As a note -

In Maximum Boost, Corky Bell goes into detail on ducting properly for your core's efficiency. He does show a few important points - one is that having lets say a 300sq Inch surface on your IC core does NOT require a 300sq Inch surface for the air inlet. You could get away with 150sq Inches - if it was ducted well, and have better performance then a 400sq Inch inlet and really poor ducting. Air will go around or just out your air scoop/bumper and around. The thing I went for was controlling the air, every piece that goes toward the radiator, goes in. I am also removing the stock airdam for an actual scoop (that is spring loaded with rounded edges and guides if I hit something) and that should add a noticed amount to flow through there, believe it or not. Air that doesnt go up when hitting the air dam can just go down and around - I am no longer giving it that option by giving the same frontal area - but with side guards and a sloped surface instead of a vertical line. I am ducting the same for my heat exchanger.

Now on the issue of getting heat out - "lt1rx7" had his 3rd gen twin turbo lt1, and with a fully vented hood, had HUGE amounts of heat coming out... We could use a vented hood! But this is one more case where the 93-97 camaros get shafted. We dont have any extractor hoods available, where the 98+ cars do, where vettes do... and even 93+ firebirds!

I've been trying to have something fabbed up to do this, but rest assured I will get the heat out in some way. I have been talking to US Exotics (he does stuff on ebay) and apparently reads these forums from time to time. He is in the process of making an L88 93-95 z28 hood, and I have asked that he do some functional extractor for us, but he does not want to mimic Mecham's designs. I respect him greatly for it, but I just want my product, copied or not - and I dont have enough skill in carbon fiber or fiberglass to do an entire hood on my own at this point.

Also some of you may wonder additionally how ducting air will help. My thoughts are two fold - the more air I can force through the radiator or around the sides (like a vette air dam) means less pressure under the car, which means it will draw air out of the engine bay, and if the effect is more dramatic, increasing stability and downforce. I think that is something a lot of people forget. Then we also can have cooling advantages...

Also the other downside to pusher fans, is that because of the angle of the radiator, which sucks, air comes in and must make a 90 degree bend to get through the fins. Because the front of the car does not allow for even air distribution, the top of the fans are getting very low pressure, where the bottom gets more pressure. This probably hurts them greatly. This is one reason I'd prefer a straight top-bottom radiator, and though it'd be smaller, it might help, and perhaps let us keep the stock pullers, which would still get un-even flow, but the pushers add turbulence infront of the AC condenser, which I want to minimize...

When I'm done and the car runs I will post pics, vids, descriptions etc of everything I've done.

 

i'm not using a becool radiator though.... still stock