viscous fan clutch

Howdy - no pic, but its the metal thing the fan blades are around. Its air-cooled and looks like the front of an airplane motor with slanted fins about 3/5's of an inch all around it. I CAN'T get mine off because its an automatic (the whole motor just turns). IF you had a stick or could lock up the motor - its easy. I did it on one with a stick. Put it in gear in low, motor off, put a big adjustable on it and whacked it with a sledge. Bingo.
AUtomatic seems fruitless. My new one's on my passenger seat.
Jude
603.601.2131

DAP sells it for around $140. I just replaced mine. '97 D1, 115k.

In my case it was a piece of cake to take off and install. Take the radiator shroud off, put an adjustable wrench (I used a 12 inch), then I took a stickball bat and smacked the handle of the wrench in a counterclockwise direction. The theory is that if you apply torque smoothly to the wrench, the motor turns, but repeated sharp impacts will be more successful in loosening the viscous clutch.

The hardest thing was removing the bolts that attach the fan to the clutch. I had to clamp the whole unit to my workbench in order to be able to move them

Jaime

Not sure what Jude is talking about, both my Rovers are automatic and it came off as mentioned. Try to get a long wrench or add a piece of pipe over it and find a blunt object to whack it with. Should come off no problem.

has anyone had good luck with the cheap dap fan clutches?
mine worked for about 10 min.took 3 months to get credit on it.

Fan clutches don't generally leak. The biggest problem in the auto repair industry is not dishonesty, it is lack or proper job skills.

I don't know what your problem is vis-a-vis a leak, or even if you have a problem. But I doubt the viscous coupler is leaking.

Before I replaced my fan clutch, my truck would start running hot towards the end of a day of wheeling. Lots of slow speed, and lots of idling, the engine on all the time except for lunch stops. If the engine was hot, and I stopped it, I could tun the fan easily by hand. that is the clasic symptom that the clutch is failing. When hot, the clutch should offer some resistance.

Also, a good fan clutch causes a growling sound when you first start your truck, and quiets down a short while later.

Anyway, I finally replaced my fan clutch when it locked up, it never freewheeled, it always caused a growling sound.


When I took it out, it had some sort of sticky substance aroung the coiled spring temp sensor, so something leaked. I was tempted to cut the sucker in half in order to understand how it works.

That would be the viscous fluid...

Step1- take off fan shrowd
Step2 - remove Serp belt from fan pulley
Step3 - use rubber strap-wrench around fan pulley to prevent it turning
Step4 - large adjustable wrench on pully nut
Step5 - highlift jack handle over adj-wrench, ease off nut in counter clockwise direction.
No banging, your knucles survive and easily accomplished.
Getting back on does not require the leverage of the jack handle, just torque it manually and the motor will do the rest once started.
Also remember to look very closely at your fan. It is plastic and with age, they develop cracks that ultimaltey manifest into fan blade carnage that could take out your radiator, hood, hoses, etc... I know, been there.
Last but not least, make sure when replacing the fan, the fins are not reversed, if that can be done...not sure since mine was replaced with an alum fan.

Really quite easy and quick with the $7 strap wrench, rubber is best to avoid pully scars.

Good luck.

Viscous Unit

The viscous unit is a piece of cake to change. Go to Autozone and get the right wrench, you can rent them and return them for a total of $0.00 dollars. Proper tools makes the job easier. With the right wrench you have to wedge something in between the water pump pully and the belt tensioner to keep the water pump from turning, mine came off with a bit of elbowgreese. Once off unscrew the fan bolts and put the new unit in. DAP unit has worked for me for over a year now.

viscous unit

not sure if your viscous unit is leaking or it was the water pump leaking which the guy saw.

in any case, you might also want to do a simple test on the visous unit itself. there is a decent write-up on this from the D-90 site. it is as follows:

"About the best I could do is, with the truck cold and engine off move the fan counterclockwise (as viewed from the radiator) by hand and get a feel for the resistance that's there. Then get the truck up to operating temperature, shut off the engine, and go move the fan by hand again. You should feel more resistance than you felt with the engine cold.

I'm not sure about a specification for the resistance force under either condition, but if it's still loose when it's hot, you can bet it's not doing it's job. This is probably one of those things we should all do when the truck is running properly, to get a feel for the "baseline condition", so to speak. So that when there's a problem, you can repeat the test and know if it's the same or different from when it was working properly."

this will at least give you an indication if your viscous unit possibly needs to be replaced.


Jaime

I gotta ask this... why rent a damn clutch-fan tool, use it, return it and then face the same need sometime in the future, when you can buy a better tool, strapwrench, for $7, and own it, use it on other things? Huh?
Tony23007, you must live right next to an autoparts store.
$00 dollars for the rental, great, but I guess gas, time to rent and return are not an issue for you since you walk next door. Must be nice.

Lutzgaterr said:

Step1- take off fan shrowd
Step2 - remove Serp belt from fan pulley
Step3 - use rubber strap-wrench around fan pulley to prevent it turning
Step4 - large adjustable wrench on pully nut
Step5 - highlift jack handle over adj-wrench, ease off nut in counter clockwise direction.
No banging, your knucles survive and easily accomplished.
Getting back on does not require the leverage of the jack handle, just torque it manually and the motor will do the rest once started.
Also remember to look very closely at your fan. It is plastic and with age, they develop cracks that ultimately manifest into fan blade carnage that could take out your radiator, hood, hoses, etc... I know, been there.
Last but not least, make sure when replacing the fan, the fins are not reversed, if that can be done...not sure since mine was replaced with an alum fan.

Click to expand...

He has it right on the buzzer on this one! Try to use the Rubber Strap Wrench. Bought a heavy duty one at Sears for 14.00. Well worth it! I ended up going through Autozone and they had a 36mm Fan Clutch wrench. This one also had a socket wrench hole for my wrench to slip on to. I ended up using that method with the wrench and it went seamless!

p m said:

Nice response, seven years after the last post!

Click to expand...

Call this the zombie thread :ghoul: !

Clutch fans will always need to be replaced... someday.