Heavy Duty Cooling Fans - Different Connectors?

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scsulliv

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2020 Ford Expedition Max. I was trying to install the heavy duty cooling system, the thicker radiator and the higher powered cooling fans. Only it looks like the heavy duty cooling fans use a three-pin connector, and the regular cooling fans on the Expedition have only two pin connectors. Anyone have any advice on how to make this work, or did I just waste a lot of money on expensive cooling fans for nothing? Or - did RockAuto send me the wrong cooling fans?
 

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LazSlate

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You may not be able to use that fan. The 3 pin fans are Ford Brushless Fans. Ford has 2 types of fans listed in the service manual.
A 2 pin brushed and a 3 pin brushless. The brushless fans care controlled by the PCM using a PWM controller (pulses).
Most brushless fans use a PWM to control the speed of the fan (which can be any rpm).

You can in theory run a brushless fan without a PWM by just supplying 12 volts to it. But kind of defeats the purpose. There is no convertor that will help as the Ford PCM regulates the speed and using a convertor will run it at full speed, if you can find one. I would return the fan and look for a heavy-duty single speed 2 connector fan.
 
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scsulliv

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Any idea which terminals on the HD fan do what? Typically there's power, ground, and a PWM signal. I'm wondering if I could run an aftermarket PWM controller from Mishimoto or something. Or use the PWM signal from the ECM, if there is one on this vehicle. Not sure how Ford cals things, but GMT900 SUV's had a PWM signal even though the cooling fans were series / parallel.

I'm definitely not finding much info out there about Ford's HD cooling fans, and I'm also not finding any HD fans that use the stock 2-pin terminals, either. I'd be cautious about running aftermarket fans in general, since they are usually lower power and less efficient than OEM.

It's possible that I could upgrade the entire forward lamp harness in the engine bay, too, but I'm thinking that's risky since it looks like the same harness runs the ABS module, the headlamps, and the cooling fans, to name a few things. Not to mention I'm not sure if the PWM signal wire would be in the remaining harnesses.
 

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