Post
by rbryce1 » May 13th, 2022 9:22 am
Here is an update to the problem I had written about regarding the radiator fan failure.
The new fan from Dewitt arrived quickly and looked great. I went about drilling out the 4 pop rivets DeWitt used to hold the fan to the radiator shroud. Not a difficult job to get the pop rivet heads off, then the fan assembly came right off the radiator.
It was a bit more difficult task to get the river that was left out of the shroud. After cutting off the rivet head, the body of the rivet that was inside the fan housing, about 1/4", still remained, and it was tight!
Had to use a die grinder to remove all of the rivet down to the shroud and then carefully use a punch to drive the remaining part of the rivet out of the hole. Since there was only about 3/8" between the radiator core and the shroud, you can imagine the care that needed to be used not to harm the core. ( I will load the photos I took this afternoon, as I am at work right now)
Once the rivets were out, the task to install the fan seemed simple enough. Line it up with the 4 holes and pop the new rivets in. NOT!
Always something! I tried top put the first rivet in, and it would not fit through the hole in the aluminum shroud. Wait a minute, the same rivet came out, why won't this one go in???
The rivets they sent me were powder coated black, and the powder coating was thick enough to stop it from going into the hole. So I decided to use rivets I had and keep the nice black ones for something else.
The first one went in fine. But when I tried to align the other 3 holes, I couldn't rotate the fan down far enough to line up with the holes. Something was wrong, but I couldn't see it. So I decided to drill out that rivet and investigate.
AW SHIT, I try drilling out the rivet and I could not make any headway! Then I realized I picked up the wrong rivet box, and found I had used a stainless steel rivet instead of an aluminum one. An hour later and the rivet was again out.
I then tried to align the fan with the holes and saw the problem. It turns out the bottom of the fan shroud was hitting the sway bar and it would not allow the fan to go down far enough to line up with the holes. That explains why the fan failed!
When I bought the radiator, the fan was already mounted on the radiator. The weight of the whole assembly was enough to bend the plastic outer shroud enough to put the radiator in, even though it was in contact with the sway bar. It bent the outer shroud housing enough that it was making contact with the rotor. Since the fan blades were made with a plastic ring around the outside, I couldn't hear or tell it was rubbing, and I assume after a while, it put enough stress on the motor, it overheated and froze.
So, I find I need to drop the sway bar about a 1/4 of an inch. I went over the talk to Danny at Van Steel about dropping the sway bar and he said no problem, but doing so will interfere with the brackets if I should ever want to install the front bumpers. He did say I could cut a small indent in the bracket should this become necessary.
We then discussed my sway bar. The smallest diameter sway bar he sells is 1”, and also has 1.1/8”, 1.1/4” and 1.3/8” diameter bars. The stock bar is 3/4". Increasing the diameter of my bar will add to the issue, but in my opinion, the added benefits of the larger sway bar compared to just shimming the bar down was an easy choice. He said if I am not doing heavy Autocross, the 1” bar will be more than enough and will show a drastic handling improvement over the stock little bar. Also, his sway bar kits come with new mounting brackets and bushings, but his have a grease fitting on the bracket to make it possible to lubricate the sway bar where it rotates in the bushing.
So, the new radiator fan is now installed WITH ALUMINUM RIVETS, and I have a new 1” sway bar with new bushings ready to go in.
Once again, thumbs up to DeWitt's for standing behind their product so well!