DIY Car Cooling Fan
Intro: DIY Car Cooling Fan
Are your car's air conditioners not that cool? Or do you need to cool down your car after parking under the sun?
Here is a simple and cheap way to make car cooling fans. You will only be needing your basic soldering skills.
STEP 1: Gather the Parts and Tools Needed.
Parts:
- Old ATX PSU (You can use a damaged one because you will be only needing one of its wires)
- 80 mm (or any size) chassis cooling fan (2-pin)
- Old 12V Cellphone Charger
Tools:
- Soldering iron
- Solder
- Hot glue gun
- Scissors
- Electrical Tape
- Pliers
-Multimeter (optional)
STEP 2: Make the Connector.
Cut one of the periphiral female molex connectors of the ATX power supply.
Then cut one red and one black wires and twist them together.
Also twist the yellow and black wires.
Put some electrical tape around the two wires.
Strip the end of the wires.
STEP 3: Disassemble the Charger.
Disassemble the charger and get the pcb.
Pull out all the components by using the pliers and desolder the female usb port. Leave the springs.
Make sure all the components are pulled out and there are no more connections.
STEP 4: Solder the Wires.
Solder the yellow and black wires to their springs. Top spring should be positive and lower spring should be negative.
Test the continuity of the positive and negative. Put one of the test probe on the positive and one of the negative. If there is no continuity, it means there is no short circuit. If there is, try tracking all connections and find a way to break some of the connections if the positive is connected with the negative.
STEP 5: Reassemble the Casing.
Reassemble the casing and put some hot glue to support wires.
STEP 6: Test It.
Connect the fan's molex connector to the female peripheral connector of your cigarette lighter adapter.
Plug the cigarette lighter adapter to your car's cigarette lighter socket.
See if it works and enjoy the cool air.
4 Comments
poiihy 8 years ago
I did this exact thing too! I used an ebm-papst 24v 120mm fan. It runs fine on 12 volts (still quite noisy though). For the power supply, I used a car adapter for a battery charger for a camera that was lost long time ago. The wire was fraying anyway. Inside the power plug there was a circuit board designed for quite a few components but the only thing it had was the wires and an LED with resistor. I just took out the board as it was useless and thin and just connected wires directly to the wires inside. Then I made a knot for strain relief and closed it up. To connect the fan I used push-in wire connectors. They work great. I don't have pictures right now so i cant mark this as "I made it" but maybe later I will get pictures.
tomatoskins 9 years ago
Great idea for all those old computer fans laying around!
fifty_ohms 9 years ago
Thanks for the comment. :)
ksan1 9 years ago