Far better airflow over the engine, at a slight expense in noise transmission.

And they don't melt if you have a slight manifold leak, showering the insides of the heater tubes and car interior with burning specks of rubber. But maybe that was just my experience of rubber cowled engines

I've been wanting some metal ones myself to paint up and fit to my spare engine, if you intend to keep your engine clean James the rubber ones never really look that good .

Is it an easy job to swap one? Increased Airflow sounds good! And yes i wouldnt mind a clean lump


And where could iget a metal one from?

check out my pics of the acad engine bay paint job that i did last year they on face book. look up simon sobey add me as friend etc etc. yes you can paint the fan as well as every thing else. its a tough job to clean everything ready to paint and then got to paint bolts washers and nuts unless you can afford new ones. next is the gearbox. this is alloy so it poilishes up really nice if you have the patience. then the wiring, heat exchangers carb air filter etc and i even found cable ties the correct colour for driveshaft gaters etc. took 3 months of evenings and weekends but well worth it and you dont get ditry when carrying oiut maintance

Yep. Only complex bit is manifold off - so new gaskets.



Anybody/where with a stack of old 2cv crap kicking about...

I painted my fan, and the tinware. Like others have said, I just made sure the fan was clean & gave it a bit of a rub down with some wet & dry beforehand.

I'm quite surprised nobody's mentioned the balance of the fan, either. Get too much paint on one side, and 6,000rpm's going to get interesting.

Spray it whilst the engine's idling

Yikes! I better stick some lead weights to the opposite side to compensate for the overspray!