Fans, Spacers And Clutches

Radiator fans come in several different styles. There are fixed bladed fans with rigid blades, flex fans with blades that ?bend? or ?flex?, and there are also thermal fan clutch type fans. Fixed and flex fans will have a 5/8 inch center hole and these fans use a ?fan spacer?. Thermal fans that use a clutch generally have a 2-5/8 inch hole in the center. When installing a fan, make sure that the word ?Front? is facing towards the radiator. We at WCCC also recommend test fitting your fan. Some aftermarket and later designed Ford water pumps have a different cast water pump which locates the fan about one inch too low. This will wipe out a fan shroud if not noticed. Please use caution. Standard cooling in most applications on Cougars for 1967 is a bolt in 17 inch wide radiator. 1968 ? 1970 used a slightly larger 20 inch wide bolt in radiator. Extra cooling for 1967 was a 20 inch wide bolt in radiator. 1968 ? 1970 all used a larger 24 inch ?clamp in radiator?. This 24 inch radiator is also standard with factory installed air conditioning. Clutch style fans sold without fan clutches. There is alot of contradicting information regarding the radiator cooling fans. The information posted in the Master Parts Catalogs is not consistent with the information from the Shop Manuals. You cannot even draw a straight line between the Mustang and Cougar either. Surprised? maybe, but we must consider that the Cougar was an upscale car compared to the Mustangs. Factor in the more dense grille work found on Cougars compared to Mustangs, plus (just guessing here), the engineers over at Mercury may have specified fans that produced less noise, for certain year Cougars? In one case the fan found on all of the sampled 1970 Cougars with 351 engines and air conditioning is a D0ZE-B 5 blade flex fan. This was unanimous amongst all of the respondents at mercurycougar.net. The Mercury MPC shows a 7 blade fan with casting number C6ZE-A, and 1970 shop manual lists a 5 blade fan with a casting number of C8SE-D. Thermal or Clutch style fans will not include clutches. We are offering used clutches for those concours type guys that want to stay "numbers matching". We are also planning to research "New" replacement fan drive clutches that are dimensionally as close as possible to the originals. We at WCCC will not accept a 'universal fit' part for our classic Cougars if at all possible.