Hey guys, I went to change the water pump today and I thought that if i remove the pulley for the water pump that the fan would come straight off. Well if turns out that I removed the screws connecting the water pump to the pully but I am unable to take the fan off.

I saw the nut located just behind the fan but for some reason I am unable to loosen this nut. I also removed the spring thingy on the front of the fan.

What is the trick to this

Thanks

gotta get the right sized spanner for the bnig fan nut and belt it with a hammer. It is a left hand thread. Last one of these I had to remove I gave up on, cut the pulley out, and ran the car with no fan!

thankyou very much, I will bolt the pump back to that car tomorrow so I an beat the nut with the hammer. Thanks for the info of the thread.

i have used a large pair of vice grips on the nut, and a length of pipe on the vise grip handle to give good leverage and something to jam the belt.

so, i'm having the same problem. i got the pump and pulley and fan out of the car. had to take the alternator and aircon off and get that bracket off as well... the nuts that hold the pump to the block are still in because they're too long and won't come out until the pulley is off... and the bracket is still joined on as well...
and now i cant get the fan off. i know it's a left handed thread and i have a spanner the right size, but i cant find anything to jam the shaft tight enough. i was thinking of putting the impeller in a vice and hitting the shifter with a hammer.

any ideas?

i need a new water pump anyway, so damage is not a worry.

thanks for your help!

warm the nut up with the oxy to burn loctite.
then hit spanner with hammer (LH thread)

whenever i had to change the waterpumps on my cars.... i ended up having to remove the radiator to get enough acces in there to pull the whole lot off.
saying that tho, i think iv been unlucky in the fact that every one iv done, seems to have been the original factory one and never changed in its life...

Use a good strong screwdriver and wedge between the pulley and 1 of the bolts. I lashed out a whole $30 for the proper spanner and yes hit it with a heavy club hammer. I did this on a ED last week.

so a steel hammer or a rubber one? cos i dont want to smash the spanner to smithereens!

i got the radiator out to get the fan out... there was only about 2mm between the fan and the radiator!

so its all out of the vehicle still joined together.

is the impeller directly connected to the shaft that the nut is on? cos im thinking i can just put the bottom of the impeller in a vice and do the spanner and hammer trick... but if its not, i dont want to stuff my chances of getting it off all together by stripping something else.

Yes I have to do this again soon as i have a small leak from the water pump.

Get a very big open ender - ring spanner that fits the nut and then jam a very big screw driver in on the pulley nuts to stop the whole thing moving.
Now get a steel preferably a 5lb small sledge hammer and belt the spanner (LH thread so clockwise) it will loosen the nut via shock it may take a few goes.

Now you can take out the fan and the plastic shroud together.

You will now be able to undo the water pump without removing other parts.

Just remember when reassembling to put a bit of loctite on that thread (don't want the fan to come spinning off).

If you've removed the spring on the clutch fan I'd suggest you replace the clutch fan as that spring is supposed to be set for the clutch within the fan.

Alternatively you could get a set of EL Thermo fans and fit them - just need to do a bit of modification on the plastic shroud for them to fit in. Remember these things pull a fair amount of amps so Alternator needs to be able to cope.

PS. It's a good idea to have a thermo switch for the fans fitted to the bottom half of the radiator.

You'll never have overheating problems again.

Good luck with sort it out though

ok, so dad crashed his panel van and i got his water pump now.

got the nut off just by jamming a big screw driver in the bolt heads and using a massive 32mm open ender.

so, now i got the new pump on, alternator and air con back on, everything back in except that stupid rubber strip across the front, and all wiring hooked back up. i think only the alternator was unplugged.

now, THIS is the problem: it did idle fine before i did the pump, with me constantly pouring water in the radiator, but now that the pump is back in, it idles way too fast. about 1000-1500 rpm. i have waited until the temp gets hot and everything, but it doesnt go down.

before, it idled fast for a few seconds then went down to about 800rpm, but now it stays up. i tried blipping the accelerator but it doesnt make the throttle go down. the throttle cable is really slack so it isnt the throttle sticking. i'm thinking its the auto choke but dunno. i havnt touched that at all.

although, i do need a new radiator cap, the current one leaks, and that may be the reason why the temp gets so high. about 3/4 on the digital guage. dunno if thats got anything to do with the idle. i shouldnt think so...

auto trans fluid level is fine, oil is overfull a bit, and everything else is untouched.

any ideas?

thanks for your help people...

also, to the author of the thread: sorry for hijacking this thread if i have.

and i think its a bit off topic now, so someone move it if you have to...

i know this is not a new thread,,but never put loctite of any kind on the clutch fan thread,,they are reverse thread for a reason,,all they need is to be tightened by hand and thats it,,they won't come off.

there's a special tool you can buy too.

i have been trying to fit a new coupling to my LTD.. ive been beating the s**t out of this bloody spanner for hours and it still does not undo i know its l h thread, but does the nut screw out of the fan or the water pump.
ive had a guts full of this heap of s**t

LOL

I'm looking at that pic thinking... "Hey that guy has the same carpet as me"

thats the spanner I bought at Bursons... also available from most auto parts stores

The Gregory's manual for the XE has a drawing of a fan clutch tool you can make...I made one years ago.
Not hard, does the job fine.
I went a bit overboard though, ended up with a really pretty spanner that took me about 3 hours to make but I tend to do that...

Any idea where online those spanners can be bought? I've got the other one, but as I live in Bundahole, no-one here has even heard of a store bought one and while they often have home made ones, they're all crappy and I think I'd rather buy a proper one. Any suggestions?

Thanx