Ok so after measuring, thinking, mocking up, temporary installing and finally welding we "dry fitted" the 4.9l in Drews bronco tonight. Then we put the radiator in its home all the way forward against the grill and discovered we have only 2.25 inches between the water pump and the radiator. Already we knew that we were not using the core support so it is gone. Now we hope someone has a great idea. The thinnest electric fan I can find is 2 5/8 inches so it would not fit if we wedged it in and that is leaving no room for movement and flex. Besides that, it seems those supper thin fans move the least air, like only 650cfm or so.

Brilliant ideas are needed: anyone know of a decent ultra thin electric fan that moves a decent amount of air? How about a different radiator? One that is a single core, real wide but not to tall?

Because I really do not want to tell Drew that we need to cut those motor mounts off, move them back a couple of inches and while we are at it we need to cut out and modify
his fire wall. (More than we already have anyway)

Oh yeah, and move the t case crossmember back and buy custom drive shafts....

I posted this here in hopes of gaining the most exposure.

Thanks folks

When I swapped the supra turbo motor into my old 4runner I had very little room between the radiator and water pump pully. Think about 1.5 inches. I had enough room to put a pusher fan in the front, but because I was worried that the pusher was to weak I bought two small fans instead of one big one and arranged them so that the fit on each side of the pulley. You could even go with 4 tranny or oil cooler fans in each corner

I believe the Explorer radiator is thinner than any EB radiator.

You might get in touch with casadejohnson (jeremy) and ask him to measure his up for you.

I like the quad fan idea, I wonder what the amp draw will be. Did you shave the back side of the grill yet? I believe you can gain nearly a 1/2" if you do. If it becomes unavoidable and you move the drivetrain back you are welcome to look at my spare driveshafts that I've kept from my Bronco.

A idea, and one that I kept in the back of my mind during my build, was to push the grill forward. Spacers could be used initially and then once the needed space is sorted you could build a piece of sheet metal to fill the gap. Creative or , it may work.

Had a buddy that did a custom shroud and a short duct to a ducted fan on each side...but that was a unique situation.

I have done a quad fan setup before and it worked well. Two fans were set for a lower temp and seemed to handle day to day stuff just fine with the other two set to turn on when things got toasty....

Can you use an electric water pump? Not sure if its much thinner but 1/2" in each direction (shave the grill) might get it done.