For those who don’t know of a Bolwell Nagari, Bolwell Corporation have made and raced their cars in Australia from the early 1960’s. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s they became giant killers on the race tracks of Australia.

My project began back in 2009 and as part of that, I set out to solve the problems of space and poor air flow in the engine bay for a large cubic capacity Ford V8 in a tight engine bay. Space constraints meant running a traditional engine fan was simply not possible and would also not generate the kind of air flow through the radiator and back over the engine required for effective cooling. Thermatic fans were certainly not new and Davies Craig were a natural choice for me.

The Nagari was always prone to bay heating and heat soak which would make re-starting a hot engine difficult.

Solving that brought the relatively new Davies Craig electric water pump and computer controller to my attention. I saw this as real opportunity to solve a number of problems with a single solution.

In the end I went a step  further, by also installing a Davies Craig hot water booster pump to deliver coolant through to the heater core.

On the road, the cooling system performed flawlessly managing the coolant temperature setting and varying only a few degrees as the Davies Craig system adjusted to speed and conditions. The system manages the water pump and fans interactively and after engine shut down runs them on for short periods to solve the problem of heat soak.

Recently, because of a move to much warmer climates in Western Australia, and as a precaution only, I upgraded to the latest Davies Craig water pump and computer.  This pump moves a larger volume of water ensuring that temperature management is further improved.

As a bonus, the new pump is more compact taking less space required in a tight engine bay.

My faith in Davies Craig was hardly a stretch as Davies Craig were long experienced and product quality was a given.

Personally, I would never build an engine without including a Davies Craig cooling system solution.  As a mark of that, I also cool my 9.2 ltr Detroit Diesel powered motorhome using Davies Craig products.  The Davies Craig fans have allowed me to replace the engine driven fan saving 25 horsepower and the fuel necessary to drive that.

My thanks to John Benson and the Davies Craig team.

Written by Alan Harmer (Bolwell Nagari owner)