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Try uploading your design to treatstock.com and price out "durable plastics" like ASA, Fiberglass and Carbon Fiber. I found a generic pulley on thingiverse and it seems to run $20 - $60 to print in those materials.
That FlowKooler pump looks nice, but there are few things I think are advantages of this setup:
1. Easier to install. The whole water pump doesn't have to be replaced, which is a hassle and waste if the one that you have works.
2. It works with any factory pump.
3. Provides more airflow, because the fan also spins faster. It should be better at cooling at idle.
If it works well enough, and a few people want to do a group buy, it could probably be done for less than $100. But I'll have to see how it works first.
installed my flowkooler the other week. It is such a game changer. 5 degrees cooler in every scenario and I was already running low temps. 188 this of year usually and operating at 181-183 around town.
Try uploading your design to treatstock.com and price out "durable plastics" like ASA, Fiberglass and Carbon Fiber. I found a generic pulley on thingiverse and it seems to run $20 - $60 to print in those materials.
Originally Posted by tnrangerover
installed my flowkooler the other week. It is such a game changer. 5 degrees cooler in every scenario and I was already running low temps. 188 this of year usually and operating at 181-183 around town.
That is nice to hear about the Flowkooler. Hopefully this can do the same for less money / work. I just did a small redesign to the pulley and sent it out to be 3D printed from glass-filled nylon, which should be stronger and easily able to handle the heat. I look forward to giving it a long-term test run.
That is nice to hear about the Flowkooler. Hopefully this can do the same for less money / work. I just did a small redesign to the pulley and sent it out to be 3D printed from glass-filled nylon, which should be stronger and easily able to handle the heat. I look forward to giving it a long-term test run.
now imagine if you did both 🤔 you’re definitely onto something. Looking forward to seeing your results
Its starting to get warmer in my region if you need another person to test the pulley. Happy try it out as I'll be doing some trips with large highway climbs into the mountains in the coming weeks along with a road trip from SF to Seattle and back.
I had the opportunity to try out the pulley today made of glass fiber reinforced nylon. First off, this new design and material are much stronger than the original nylon. To me, it feels plenty strong to be used regularly when made out of this material. It also is significantly more heat resistant, so it should handle any normal amount of engine heat.
It was really hot today, like 90-95. Normally, with the grey thermostat, my engine would typically idle around 195 with no A/C. Now it seems to be sitting around 190-192. On the road at 45 mph, it was about 188. I did not have any belt issues in my 5 min stop-go test drive. The temps seem to be more consistent generally.
I am going to revise the pulley design a little bit as I had to sand this one down to get it to fit. It appears that this material may be a tad smaller than my CAD model when printed. As a result, it is wobbling very slightly, but I am not concerned. Next one I will make the dimensions slightly larger.
Overall, given this first successful test run, I plan on keeping this pulley in the car full time and I will report more. I need to get my A/C fixed, but then I will do a test with A/C.
Hopped back on here just to see if this was still alive. Been sitting on my flowkooler pump since they were first released just because I haven't had the time or energy to get around to it. Still wouldn't mind trying a pulley out as well, even in combination with the flowkooler.
Hopped back on here just to see if this was still alive. Been sitting on my flowkooler pump since they were first released just because I haven't had the time or energy to get around to it. Still wouldn't mind trying a pulley out as well, even in combination with the flowkooler.
This Disco had a valley pan gasket oil leak that got a lot worse not long after I added the pulley. I ended up having to tear the engine down last weekend and I just finished putting it back together tonight, so I haven't had a chance to drive it much. So far so good on the pulley though. I'll try to drive it to work some this week if the leak seems to be gone.
To come full circle on this, I have put 200 miles on the pulley. I have come to several conclusions/observations. These are with my stock cooling setup with low temp (genuine grey thermostat) and with the temp in the 70-90s with the A/C running pretty consistently.
1. Temperature spikes seemed less (although hard to accurately say).
2. Running temperatures were generally about the same.
3. Fan did seem to move more air, especially at idle.
4. On very hot days (high 90s), there was a belt slip / squeal at low RPM (when parking) when the A/C compressor was on. I believe this was due to insufficient tension on the belt from the smaller pulley. My first instinct on the fix for this would be to change the tensioner pulley for a larger model.
5. The glass-filled nylon pulley held up well. The only deformation I could find was around the bolt holes where I slightly overtightened the bolts and compressed the nylon a bit.
Overall, I am somewhat underwhelmed with the results. I expected a bit more. Since the results are so similar to the factory pulley, I am wondering if the factory thermostat is having a bit of an influence still. I am considering testing the inline thermostat (which I used to run on one of my old Discos back in the day) with the pulley. Ultimately, however, I am starting to think that 10% may just not be enough of size difference. I put the factory pulley back on for the time being until I figure out how/if I want to run this further.
To achieve the results I want, I might look into electric booster water pumps and/or the flowkooler.
