The fan is great, truly NOS, and it was actually 14 5/16ths. It fit on like a glove. They also had a smaller pulley available at Greenlight but I figured I’d try this first. Also, I installed the electric fan as well as the adjustable temp switch. Here are the results:
When I first drove the car, it ran at about 170-175 on the gauge for about 10 minutes, driving 40-60mph. Then, when I turned off the road and slowed down for about a tenth of a mile and turned back, the temp climbed up to about 195 and remained steady at the same 40-60mph range. When I stopped the car, I let it idle for a few minutes and then turned it off and opened the hood. Boilover! 🙄
So, I installed and wired the relay and adjusted the electric fan to come on when I saw the temp just a hair above 200 on the gauge. I suspect I have some air in the system because the fan worked for a few minutes, then shut off, but when I checked the temp on the gauge by turning on the ignition it read about 225-230! 😯 But, no boilover indications, I suspect that a small bit of air made its way to the top when the car was shut down which led to some erroneous indications. I don’t want to adjust the temp switch lower because I only want it to work in traffic.
I may take the car to LA next weekend to meet up with some CAT members, before I do I will test out the car in the local area to make sure that the fan does give enough airflow when stopped to prevent boilover.
Thanks to everyone who posted here, I think this will be a good discussion to come back to in the future to see how things worked out. Special thanks to Greenlight for the fan – nice to know I could get a Ford 6-blade fan that I didn’t need to trim and I didn’t need to get off eBay.