Since 2016, I’ve had an alternator belt which had a manufacturing defect. It worked fine, but had a kind of bump or something that made the belt move back & forth in its rotation. I’m getting picky lately so I thought it time to replace the belt.

Which meant pulling my fan shroud, the fan clutch, the fan, and all that gear on the front of the engine. I’ve been meaning to repaint my 6 blade fan for, oh I don’t know, about 5 years. So why not get it all in 1 go?

So off I went:
1) Removing the fan & clutch assembly is tedious. Give it 30 minutes or more since you have to slowly, evenly unscrew the 5/16’s-24 fine thread screws. No get-one-out, then get-the-rest for this job. There is very, very little working room and you more or less have to use an open end 1/2 wrench. 4-6 quarter turns per screw, then move on to the next one. So the deal is, do a couple of turns on one screw, then move on to the same number of turns on the next screw as you gradually work them off the nose of the water pump.

2) While the fan stuff was off the engine, I took a few minutes to spray the block with desgreaser, but figured out pretty quick that as it foamed down, it was going to create a giant mess on my garage floor. Task for another day.

3) The fan & shroud are so close to one another, you more or less have to take both out as 1 unit. I.e. get all the screws out for the shroud, loosen or remove the accessory belts, then unscrew the fan clutch from the water pump nose.

4) The great thing about a clutch fan (for repair-ability) is that if the belts are off, you can spin both the water pump nose and the fan to gain access to the retention screws. Use this ability to spin parts to a convenient position so you can apply your wrench. This means look for the spot on the fan with the greatest distance between 2 fan blades.

I sanded & resprayed the fan to make it look nice. I shot the fan clutch (6 years old) with degreaser for the same reason. I shot the block too, but backed off. I spent a bit of time on the shroud and added some fresh sealing rubber.

With the various screws on the bench, I took 15 minutes to spin them through a tap & die to clean up the threads. I was hoping clean threads would save me time & frustration on reassembly. This was true. Those little 5/16-24 screws went back into the water pump very easily.

Big advice:
When you want to put the fan/fan clutch assembly back on, put exactly 1 screw (with lock washer toward the bumper) loosely back on the water pump snout. This will save you 15-30 minutes of stabbing a screw in and _hoping_ the fan clutch, pulley, & waterpump holes all line up. More or less, you’re using the first screw as an alignment pin.

The idea here is use that 1 correctly aligned screw as a locating pin for the other 3 screws. So you put it in, just a thread or 2, then push the washer toward the bumper, then slip the fan clutch onto it and nudge it up onto the water pump snout. I rotated that screw to the bottom so I could slip the fan clutch over it easily from the top.

From here, you have the installation tedium of locating and threading the other 3 screws and washers, but at least you’re not stabbing away in the dark, with no working room and everything spinning *****-hilly while you try to get screws to thread.

Anyway it’s all buttoned up with cleaned up parts and nice resprayed fan, but this job is no fun. More or less 6 hours from disassembly to test driving.

Do any of you have a smarter way to pull a clutch fan without removing the radiator? Inquiring minds want to know.

Hope this helps some of you.
Chris

 

Year, make and model? Because with my '72 Supreme, the belts will come off without removing the fan and shroud.

 

A piece of cardboard works well for this.

 

When doing this if there is not much room, I loosen the shroud and move it toward the engine. Then I pull the radiator because with everything so close, chances are the wrench will slip and will poke a hole in the radiator. Removing the radiator and shroud gives more than enough room to do your job and not shred your hands or damage other parts.

 

I was also wondering about your year & model. On my '65 442 the belts can be changed by removing nothing except possibly another belt.

 

Year, make modes is a ‘66 Starfire with AC and later 455.

While it was all apart I measured the length of the water pump and mine is the 5 1/8” length version. To be absolutely sure I drilled a 3/16”s piece of plastic with a 5/16’s hole and bolted it to the nose of the water used it as a straight (ish) edge, so I could be sure of the distance to the back of the pump.

I did the belts with the whole thing reassembled and they fit through the fan to shroud gap without much trouble. I have a factory shroud, but with an extended left side as stolen from a later Toro so that it covers the entire width of the core. In ‘66 Olds only made one shroud which left about 1/3 of the core uncovered. The 65 big car shrouds are more or less a safety ring from what I’ve seen.

I think next time I do the water pump I will pull the radiator, but I was trying to avoid doing that this time, which is why I put up with the more-painful-than-necessary wrenching process.

Since I’d done it before, I had never thought about putting a wrench through the radiator. That is well worth worrying about..

The cardboard tip is great, exactly what i was looking for. Simple but effective!

Cheers
Chris