50 dollar electric fan swap
 

This is probably the cheapest way to get a set of good electric fans. It does involve scrap yard parts though. For your fans you use the dual electric fans out of a nissan altima/maxima. I prefer the altima fans because they have pegs at the bottom instead of bolt tabs so they are easier to install.
You will need to cut and drill angle aluminum to mount the fans and wiring the setup will require a simple 30 amp 12volt relay and some patience. You will actually mount it onto the bolt holes where your fan shroud was previously.

more pics. you'll have to cut the angle aluminum similar to what i have in the picture. Pretty simple job for that part.

This is where the pins on the bottom of the fan sit. It's another piece of angle aluminum notched out across the center to clear a flair in the drip rail, drilled and bolted to the lip of it. You have to remove the radiator for this part.

Wiring it is a fairly simple job. You'll need 3 colors of wire to keep you straight. red/black for pos/neg(ground) and one other color for your realy activating wire.
A. Activating wire (Run to ignition switch or coil wire)
B. hot wire to fans (blue wire on maxima/altima fans)
G. ground/negative (connect the yellow wire on the maxima/altima fans to ground)

your relay should have a diagram like this on it or with it with these spots numbered and corresponding to poles on the relay

most 30amp 12volt relays will look like this and be numbered the same. You should be able to pick these up at the local parts store as off-road or fog lighting relays. They run about 7 bucks there but i imagine an electroncs distributor would sell for much less.

if your relay looks like this then pole 86 goes to ground, pole 85 is the switch (goes to ignition or coil), pole 30 is the hot wire to the fans, pole 87(very top) is the hot wire from your battery. P.S. if you put your hot wire on 87a then your fans will be on when the switch is cold. You may also find it neccesary to put an additional manually operated switch on the relays switch to turn the fans off or on. This manually operated switch may also be accompanied by a temperature operated switch designed to turn on when the fans reach a certain temperature. My descriptions are confusing, i know, so if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Just two questions...

1. How does the cooling ability compare to the stock clutch fan?

2. What year Altima did you get yours off of?

Looks like the 93-97' year fans.

The motor was much cooler at idle but they suck for break-in. Regular driving you have more power and it runs cooler. For break-in better keep the drirect drive non clutch fan hooked up. That or a couple box fans. The first time i dropped i ddint have this problem though.... It was 34 degrees outside when i started. temperature guage 5 feet away read 55 degrees when i shut it off though. Considering the setup costs about 50 bucks installed, i'd say its much over worth it. dont nkow what year altima, i think he's (^) close tho.

Is anyone else running this set up? How would it work in California when the summers hit 100+?

I dont know if cali's 110 is different from Texas 110, but they survived Texas 110 in San Antonio stop and go driving for two summers now, and considering how San Antonios winter is lacking leaving and extra couple months or so of summer that's doin pretty good. Also, one of my friends is running them on an '84 pickup with a 350, 993 heads, hydraulic roller cam, holley 600cfm vac sec and headers (tends to run leaner and hotter) and never sees 165 with a 160 thermostat.

Another common upgrade among rockcrawlers is the electric fan off of a Ford Taurus/Lincoln Mark8, etc. They move a TON of air, and they're everywhere in junkyards.

However, this is a sinlge fan, so unless you fabricate a shroud yourself, it'll pull air through only the center 10" of the radiator.

The downside is they draw 33amps running on high, and a hair under 100 when first started. I'm going to be running one in my 79 C10 project rig. You can find thermostatic switches from companies like flex-a-lite easily, to turn the fan on and off at preset temps. Also, I'll be running the fan through a 75A bosch relay. Standard 25A automotive relays can get unreliable with this kind of extended load...

The real bonus for offroaders is that it keeps the engine much cooler at idle & slow speeds where clutch fans don't excel, and you can kill them whenver you want by flicking a switch if you install a manual cutoff, so when you're in deep water it'll keep the fan blades out of your radiator... and bucketfuls of water don't get thrown all over your alternator and distributor.