Tried the no fan experiment, so far so good. Installed aux. fan from parts car, but never had to use it. Noticiable extra pep, esp. at lower speeds where the air drag hasn't caught up. I think it's finally making the thermostat open, where before there was so much excess cooling it didn't ever open. Mostly drive flat coastal highway, and hardly ever get stuck in high temp stop and go traffic, manual trans. and no a.c., so no heavy heat loads. Might not work for auto,a.c., and hot city driving.

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Just look for some of the small 4-cylinder FWD imprts. Any of those fans will be enough for your 240D cooling system. You may not do much city or hot weather driving, but you really should be prepared.

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Oh I have the real fan, and keep it in the trunk. But it eats up 5 HP (I heard) and takes longer for the engine to get to operating temp. I installed the electric fan off my parts car also.

I'll be curious about the long term results. When I bought my 409d it did not have the engine driven fan, just an aftermarket electric fan in front of the radiator. That electric fan did not have the same capacity as the engine driven fan. I noticed a significant increase in cooling power when I installed an engine driven fan. The difference may not be important in cool driving conditions. In temperatures around 90 degrees on inclines, I found the difference quite noticeable.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

It's been around 6 months, and so far it hasn't gone over 180 , and stays at 175 99 per cent of the time

No big deal, as long as you watch the gauges. Used to take them off the trucks for the winter, to get better mileage (today it didn't make it above 0F).

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daBenz - 1970 220D