Bust fan and radiator

Hi,
I thought I'd share a recent mishap with my P38a DT. Driving home Wednesday evening I heard a muffled bang from the engine compartment and noticed some debris coming out from the back of the vehicle so I pulled over to take a look to see coolant pouring out of the radiator. Also some of the blades were missing off the viscous fan. The car's in the garage stripped down, they were as puzzled as I was as to what could have caused this. It seems to me to be very unlikely for anything to have been flicked up off the road, I guess it's possible though. There were no missing bits that could have dropped into the fan.
Anyone experienced anything similar? Any ideas as to cause?

Mike

Too many newspaper testing

Fatigue of the blades hot cold hot cold ect was the cowling damaged too?? Maybe cowling slipped .

I wondered about fatigue of the fan blades, I tried flexing the remaining blades and they seemed fine. There was a break in the cowl near the top of the O/S side near the top. Difficult to see how anything could have bust its way through at this point. Cowling was still where it should have been.

It's wierd I have heard of it before but not oftern I think the blades get thicker nearer the vicious unit but not 100% on that so less chance of a flex brake if so .how's play in w/pump if any and were there full unbroken blades left or just some stubs .

No play at all in the water pump. Most of the blades were completely intact, 3 or 4 (can't remember exactly & haven't got the fan to hand) just short stubs left. From memory, a couple of the broken blades were next to each other with a complete blade separating the other 1/2 broken blade(s).

mikeateves said:

No play at all in the water pump. Most of the blades were completely intact, 3 or 4 (can't remember exactly & haven't got the fan to hand) just short stubs left. From memory, a couple of the broken blades were next to each other with a complete blade separating the other 1/2 broken blade(s).

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Mmm wierd well I would check every thing in the surrounding area for security so that your sure nothing can get it the fans path,hopefully just an unexplained mystery one for the xfiles


Good luck

there have been a few reports of the fan breaking up, in one case a ****part one that broke up after a couple of weeks.

Hi,
Thanks for the replies. I'm inclined to agree that this was down to the fan breaking up.

Datatek said:

there have been a few reports of the fan breaking up, in one case a ****part one that broke up after a couple of weeks.

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Most probably mine ! Been running the Datakek mod for about 18 months now with no problems but it is a new rad after the fan took it out and that one was only 11 months old after the top header split with old age.