Clutch fan

[bcdivad]

Anybody know if a clutch fan can be rebuilt?
Mine froze up today and WHINES like crazy.
Haven't had time to take it off and look at it yet.
Won;t spin when you TRY to spin it by hand.
Never had any trouble with clutch fans till now.

[kassim503]

sounds like the bearings are either frozen, or worn out so the plate inside is contacting somethin else inside of it. You can take the fan off, and unscrew the 4 phillips head screws to seperate it into 2 halves and inspect the guts of it, its surprisingly simple to understand its workings. Personally, id just buy another one.

Ill split the one sitting next to me to see if the bearings are easy to get to in a few minutes.

The fluid is some kind of special silicone fluid, but that shouldnt be hard to obtain, and the bearings shouldnt be hard to obtain either, but getting high quality ones might make it kinda expensive.

If you do alot of highway driving, just take the fan off for now, you dont want blade separation from the extra rpms its spinning right now. Also its still not really warm yet in WNY.

[bcdivad]

Had it off all last winter. Just headed the car into the wind if I was going to let it idle for any length of time. Probably do that again till I get it fixed.
It really surprised me how LOUD these things are.

[asavage]

Imagine how much power it requires to spin the fan at those speeds.

[kassim503]

Imagine how much power it requires to spin the fan at those speeds.

Remember when my metal clutch fan seperated from the wp? I was at WOT when it freed itself and I felt the power difference, in between trying to understand what just happened.

[edit] The plastic oem fan gets real loud, if you rev it from a cold start u can get a good howl out of it.

Ill try to get around to looking at the old fan clutch I have here, as soon as I find a phillips head screwdriver, all of mine are nowhere to be found.

[kassim503]

Ok, spilit apart the fan clutch. I wish I had my digitial with me, so I can take pics, but ill do my best to describe it.

There are three layers of the fan clutch, the clutch disc- a metal plate that appears to be pressed and stamped to the shaft (part of the hub that bolts up to the wp)

The outer clutch surface ( back cover)- just the opposing clutch surface, holds what appears to be 1 bearing that goes from the shaft to the clutch itself. Its like the flywheel in a manual car.

Fluid reservoir (front cover) holds the spring on the front for the valve. As the spring heats up, itll expand and the valve inside will open. The valve is a simple piece of sheet metal controlling fluid flow into the clutch assembly.

The bad news, the clutch face is pressed in, if you where to yank it out and press it back in, you would have to regap it. And that gap is probably pretty close, feeler gauge close. So I would not reccomend bothering with a fan clutch rebuild.

I dissasembled a NAPA/hayden unit PN# 274310. I noticed that there is some troubles with the design of the valve. The shaft thats attaches the sheet metal valve to the shaft going to the spring outside the clutch is punched into place, with no keyway or anything to hold it into place. The reason why this clutch failed was because of the valve sliding to the off position regardless what position the spring is in. I jb welded this one back together using room temperature as a almost open position. Going to try swapping her over this weekend, or tommorow. Im noticing the one on my car is starting to run warm after in traffic driving, also a NAPA 274310.

[bcdivad]

Probably won't bother with rebuilding then.
Gonna look into putting an electric fan on it...

Thanks.....