How much amperage can an alternator support? no really...

[john at westcoastgarage.net]

Among all the respondents here, only Cody is a pro, and I doubt he has 
anywhere near 35 years of driveability experience in the state with the 
toughest emissions laws in the world.  You may theorize all you want, a 
car with a tampered cooling system simply has a far lower chance of 
passing an emissions test than one that functions properly.  Empirical 
knowledge, gained over a big chunk of those 35 years, tells me that a 
car running with the fan activated all the time, properly working 
thermostat or not, makes more HCs and CO than one that cycles properly.  
Often it's not a big difference, but there IS a difference, one shown to 
me by doing hundreds of tests with an emissions tester.  I don't give 
the theory much thought, I just make 'em pass based on my experience.  John

Vittorio Bares wrote:
>  
>   
>>> Um... no. The coolant thermostat will keep the engine at the stats 
>>> design temp if it's in proper working order. Granted the engine should 
>>> be allowed to run 10 or so degrees above stat temp, but with a 190 
>>> degree stat the engine should run roughly at 190 degrees with the fan 
>>> full on.
>>>       
>
> Looks like there is consensus that a properly operating thermostat will keep the engine running at the appropriate temp.
>
>   
>>> Now if it were my car the fan would be on an automatic fan switch with 
>>> a manual over-ride. That way if it ever starts getting warm you can 
>>> assume a switch failure and flick on the over-ride, voila good to go. 
>>> Saying that a manual switch is removing a failure mode is very very 
>>> faulty logic...the toggle switch used sure as hell isn't impervious to 
>>> failure (in many cases it may be MORE likely to fail), which means you 
>>> have deleted one failure point and added another, plus added 
>>> additional wiring that could fail.
>>>       
>  
> Given that the entire car was re-wired - 'additional' wiring was deleted ;)
>  
> Your strategy, which would include a temp-switch w/a manual override seems like the best approach - giving some level of redundancy. My assumption is that a good switch should have a very good MTBF compared to a temp switch - esp since its hardly used (switched to off, then on) - but this may also be a bad assumption.
>
> Vittorio -
>