This was just a repair to keep the old grumpy ******* running. I bought thier electric fan controller. Was a bit hesitent at first due to the $134 price tag. After doing a bunch of research on other similar controllers that cost less I chose to buy the Dokota Digital unit for a few reasons.
1.) Mounts in the cabin, not the engine bay. All previous controllers I had would last about a year before corroding to the point of having to replace every electrical connector on the wires, and strugle with cleaning the connectors on the controllers as best I could. Then completely failing after the 2nd year. Cleaning connectors causes thier size to be reduced and never fits the same again. The only part that mounts in the engine bay is the heavy duty fan relay, and is my only source of complaint. It's a minor issue, and easily remedied.
2.) Comes with a heavy duty 70 amp relay. Others that come with a relay are only 30amp. I have even seen some with 20 amp relays. Yes my fan only draws 10 to 15 amps, but this leaves room for further changes later as needed without buying another. Plus covers those who may need more current handling.
3.) The abillity to integrate with thier other products. When the actual rebuild of the old grumpy turd starts I plan on using thier instrument cluster if this unit turns out to be as good as promised.
4.) I hate using a radiator probe for temperture sensing. You never get the actual engine water temp. The engine is always hotter then the temp at the radiator inlet port. Plus the temp drop at the radiator tube and fins + air flow. In some cases this can cause over heating before the fan kicks in. Like towing heavy loads, or hot ambient temps. Such as Texas, Arizona, and parts of California.
5.) Abillity to run custom guages, and senders without a seperate sender. More on this bellow. It's not perfect, but opens up many more options, and makes this unit far more then just another locked black box product.
Now for the review.
I could have bought it through a 3rd party for literaly a couple of bucks less, and in some cases $20 more. I chose to buy direct for this reason, and test thier shipping, etc. It arrived in a reasonable amount of tine given the current pandemic. Due to this it took a few extra days to ship (reduce staffing). Actual shipping is a crap shoot right now, and is the delivery company's issue not thiers.
All parts appears to be high quality. The intructions are fantasic and detailed. They do not force you down load them. While available online, they ship a hard copy with it. Which is nice. I like having a printed version while I work, and less step for my prep work.
As I said above, the relay is a nice 70 amp relay. The downside is the connector supplied is not weater resistent, and mounts in the engine bay. This is my only source complaint. It is a nice quality relay socket other wise. Due to it being a 70 amp, it will not mount into a standard water tight relay box. The load side spade connectors are larger due to the rate current load. The pig tail wires are of high quality. Which is a nice departure from the standard Amazon, and parts store units.
This one issue is not a deal breaker for me. I'm installing a water tight box for some power and ground terminals in the engine bay at the same time. So I will just mount the relay in this box as well.
Options for the temp sender and guage are well thought out, and many. Obvious it integrates with thier products, and many standard after market guage and temp senders. Plus there is a custom calibration option if needed.
This ware thier unit realy shines. While it does not work with every single possible guage and sender, it is far better then many competitors. From experience, and information in there instructions it does apoear to work better with full sweep guages. A guage with actual numbered ticks is required for custom calibration. As you will be syncing the guage/sender and control unit together, and need to know the actual displayed temp. A minimum of 4 descrete temps are needed, and max of 6 can be used.
You can either configure the unit with the two supplied buttons on the in cabin unit, or download thier app. I did both. The stand alone option is a but clunky, but I'm old IT guy that is used to configuring old network printers at the controll panle. So it was not big deal for me. The app was easy to use, and appears to handle everything the stand alone config option provides.
Now I most have missed this part when I read through the instructions online while researching this item, and bought a smal 3/4 sweep guage/sender combo. That's my fualt. I did get the custom calibration to work for me though. I used the max amount of calibration points. The only thing I couldn't due is get the resitence down to lowest numbered temp reading on my guage, 100 F degrees. So I set it for the next available of 125F.
When I ran the diag in the app it showed my cold temp as being 125F. I thought this would be an issue, and would need to get a different guage/sender combo. Turns out that while the guage will display temps bellow 125F the unit works independant from this and will start reading the increase in temp accurately once the engine temp reaches 125F. Yay! No need to go buy more parts. Now this does not mean you should go buy a guage willy nilly though. I just happened to luck out in this regard.
You can go with just a stand alone temp sender option as well, but this requires the extra purchase of one of the Dokota Digital 300F temp senders. This is a nice option if you only want to use your stock guage that read Cold/Normal/Hot instead of actual numbers.
They realy thought out the design, and is ware many of the lower cost options fail as well. Normaly you can not run 2 guages off the same temp senders. Doing so requires a seperate sender for each guage, and the controll unit counts as a guage. This because guages are passive devices, and adding another will change the resitence of the circuit.
I'm not sure what electronics magic Dakota Digital worked, but the controll unit is obviously not just a passive device. It can can spliced into the same sender sense wire that guage uses without mucking up the guage reading. This nice as I did want to figure out how to run 3 or 4 temp senders on an intake manifold that was designed for only only one.
This reduced my total temp sender count to 2. One for my aftermarket TBI fuel injection setup, and one for the guage and fan controll unit. I went to my performance car parts store, AKA the hardware store, and bought a 3/8's brass T connector and one 3/8's brasd close fit pipe connector. This setup is small enough to fit under my TBI air breather on my 360FE with both senders attached. A perfect setup that wont rust out in a year or 2.
So there you have it. It cost more then many of the other options, but in my mind it is well worth the cost for a well designed USA product. One that I wont have to tend to constantly, and replace every year or 2.
I may have left a few of the options, like dual fan controll, etc. This is because I did not use them, but it does have it. As well as dual stage dual fan controll, but these options can easily be looked up in thier product description, and online instructions. It even has the abillity to let the AC command the fans, and the abillity to shut the fans off at a certain speed if it is integrated with thier guage cluster. For those of you with metric setups. It can be easily set to this as well. Over all a very well design product, and issue with the vendor as well.
Dakota Digital. Good experience.
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