Electric fans

[Steve Jones]

My trials Chummy, now sold, was very similar to Bob's in specification other than it was coil, not mag, and 12v. It had a modern 'thick' radiator core and it too led a pretty hard life to say the least. The only hill I ever experienced any overheating was Bealey Plantation used on the John Harris Derbyshire Trial. That's a long flat out pull where you keep your foot down and on a couple of occasions, when it was a warmer than usual late winter/early spring day we got a bit of steam at the top leading to hearing the fuel boiling in the SU float chamber when we stopped and vaporisation when setting off again. Other than that, a bigger problem was getting it to run warm enough and I often used to blank off the bottom third of the radiator.

The fan belt was set quite loose and I do wonder if having it a bit tighter so that the fan was properly driven would have helped on those runs up Bealey. Mind, with the best engine fitted, we did see 6500rpm sometimes...

Steve