[torqjunki]

I'm with you now Rex. When you said the fan was in the shroud, I took that to mean the entire fan. What you describe is exactly the way mine is set up. The structural part of the fan that attaches to the hub is in the shroud a little. However, the functional part of the fan, the blades, are 1/2 in and 1/2 out. I do not have any clearance problems with PS pump, but did have to cut off some excess material from shaft on evac pump. I installed my glass hood that I'm working on (details in street section), and have a back up manual temp gauge hooked up and set up on cowl so I can see it. What I'm learning is that my Autometer elec gauge is jacked up!. It was mild yesterday, 85-87 deg out while I was driving. Taking forever to heat up with 180 thermostat with 3 holes drilled in it. Once up to temp, the car was running around 175 at or near 3000 rpm. Slower speeds tried to push the temp down to 170. The Autometer gauge was very close when it was steady, but is spiking up and down from 160 to 240 mostly when I get on brakes to slow down. Need to explore this, its driving me crazy. I was concerned about how long it was taking to heat up, so I bought a new tstat and drilled only one hole. My bypass is blocked BTW. I will drive it again today and see how it acts. I am leaning toward putting the clutch fan combo back on mainly because I feel the flex is robbing some HP and it is almost impossible to keep belts from squeaking. I would like the temp to stay more consistent because to variance affects idle speed and quality. I think most of my temp concerns was likely the dang gauge!

[george kujanski]

Probably not the gauge.....your battery feed to the instrument panel or the panel ground is poor. Stepping on the brakes increases the current (also increases the voltage drop) in the feed and/or changes the ground connection to the I.P. if that is poor.

George

[torqjunki]

Thanks George, I will look into that. Where should I be looking for a 1971 Firebird?