Fan repair and upcoming repairs and upgrades
Today I finished repairing the drivers side radiator fan. I had to use a dremel to remove some metal on the back of the fan motor to remove the rear casing. One of the brush holders seemed to be melted a little and the brush wasn’t moving at all. The opposite side brush worked fine. I had to spray everything down with an electrical contact cleaner, and scrape some plastic off the brush holder. Eventually, I got the brush to move through its range of motion, but it still does not move as freely as the other one.
I put everything back together, used JB Weld to put the case back together, and now everything works. Not sure how long this will last, but I am receiving a brand new fan on Monday. I’ll just have to monitor the fan over the next few weeks. I should have waited until I attempted to repair the fan before ordering a new one, but the new fan was only $90 at RockAuto (Febi/Bilstein fan). At the dealer, they cost $200+ and this one is a better fan.
On Monday, I get all the other goodies for my car: serpentine belt tensioner, alternator pulley, tools to remove the alternator pulley, and a Koni coilover suspension with all new mounts, bolts, and bumpstops.
Ever since my timing belt change, I’ll randomly get ticking/clicking sounds near my serpentine belt tensioner. I know it’s coming from the tensioner area, and not the timing belt, since it stops when I put less load on the electrical system. From researching online, it seems the alternator pulley is a common point of failure.
When I fixed my front crankshaft oil seal flange, I had the tensioner in the locked position for I think a week or so. This probably overstressed the spring mechanism, so that, combined with the alternator pulley, is causing the clicking (I hope). I can replace both on Monday evening and find out for sure. If it doesn’t fix the clicking, I’ll have to do some more research and tests on my car.
The Koni coilovers should be fun to install. Unfortunately, they’ll lower the car 1″, so I’ll have to figure out what to do about the skid plate I have installed. Sometimes when I pull in or out of my driveway, the bottom scrapes. I can’t even imagine how often I’ll scrape if I lost an inch. I’ll probably order the newer aluminum skidplate from DieselGeek and sell my current plate. The difference in clearance is about .6″, so that’ll offset the drop a little.