I have apparently destroyed my new cooling fan and need some help regarding wiring. Background: I just installed a new aluminum radiator, shroud, and electric fan into my 1957 3600 which is powered by a 350 engine with 700R4 transmission.
After a 30 minute test drive the cooling fan stopped running and of course the engine temp began to rise. To troubleshoot, I unplugged the fan connector and connected test leads directly to a 12 volt battery to verify the problem was actually the fan and not a temp sensor, relay, etc. I then connected a multimeter to the input side of the fan connector to check input voltage. The meter indicated 16.2 volts input to the fan. I assume this is what fried my fan motor. The fan installation directions indicated I should run a wire with fuse directly to the battery. Since my battery is underneath the truck bed and I wanted to avoid a very long lead to the battery, I elected to instead, connect the fan relay to the output pole of the one wire alternator (with a 30 amp cicuit breaker inline).
Is my problem caused by connecting directly to the alternator? Is my alternator output too high at 16.2 volts, thereby destroying the fan motor? Note: the in dash volt meter usually indicates from 12.2 up to 14.2 volts.
All help is appreciated, especially solutions that go beyond "remove the new fangled electric fan and install an engine driven fan".
Thanks
