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A list of Don't and a Fan Removal Question

stuttgartmetal

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Joined
23 Feb 2009
Messages
2,519
Don't promise to let your mate borrow your car to take his daughter to her school prom.
Don't take him out in it a few days before so he can have a drive.
Don't let him try to drive it fast.
Dont let him be so rough on the engine, the fan belt snaps.
Don't promise you'll fix it on Saturday.
Don't go to Halfrauds and buy at set of M splines for £35 because you need the M10
Don't borrow an M10 spline off your mate.
Don't drop the M10 spline out of the wrench so it rolls under the fan.
Don't then jack up the car, and take off the undertray.
Don't try poking about for an hour with a coat hanger.
Don't try again after after retriving the spline.
Dont lose it again.
Don't apply 300lb/ft to the spline and 24mm spanner.
Dont slip with the tools.
Don't spend from 10am Saturday to 2pm Sunday half fitting belts.


Once you've cut the bolt off with a selection of different hand held hacksaws, is it easy to get the fan off, and send it for repaint ?


Thanks in advance.
 
I lent my car to a mate to take his daughter to her prom, and yes he dinked it and yes he complained about the cost of a small repair that no way I was going to pay for and yes I WONT do it again. :x
 
Do send me a pm. I live in Kenley, have a 996 and a fair selection of tools and I'm happy to lend assistance/a 2nd opinion/sympathy.

Mike
 
Hi Stuttgart

Thanks for the entertaining list of don'ts, I can definitely empathise with you.

I had to change my alternator last year and couldn't believe how Porsche had designed everything to turn what is a 10 minute job on any normal car into a two week marathon!

I also dropped something underneath the fan and then had to drive back to Halfords to buy one of those magnets on a telescopic stick (something I had never previously owned and wondered why anybody would ever need one ) to retrieve it.

Even buying the replacement belts was more complicated than it should have been because Porsche seem to have issued a number of belts of very similar (but importantly very slightly different) lengths.

It was quite satisfying, though, when the whole thing went back together eventually with a new alternator, freshly painted fan and housing, new fan bearing and new nicely adjusted belts and only one extra bolt left in the pot that I had seemingly forgotten to replace!!!
 
Hi,

The alternator and the fan housing have to come out to remove the fan. It's not a hard job on the face of it, however the fan hub bearing may be seized onto the shaft of the alternator and equally the fan itself onto the hub.

Both these need a modicum of mechanical sympathy to deal with as the fan is magnesium and easily damaged. It's big bucks to replace so worth being careful with.

Technically you shouldn'y just paint magnesium, it needs have a DOW 9 coating but its extremely difficult to have done. The chemicals are pretty nasty. Powder coating was frowned on for magnesium due to the heat used but you may have no alternative.

On some 964s the fans have been de-laminating (with disastrous results) due to water ingress and corrosion. The end of the blades starts to split... I suspect 993 will be encountering the same problem. This is made worse if the fan bearing has play and the fan touched the housing removing some of the coating.

Anyway, if you struggled with the belts, it might be an idea to have a seasoned helper... I would if you were near.

Regards
GR
 
I've recently had my fan housing (also mag alloy) vapour blasted and then re chromate plated. Lucky for me we have a mag alloy specialist near by who tackled the work with little stress.

If the original chromate coating is removed or damaged, it really should be replaced before any paint applied as the mag gasses and will corrode and push the paint off quite quickly.
 
I managed to complete this job five weeks after I started.
The m16 nut on the alternator seized solid
After a day on it and the m10 spline adventure I cut the old one off.
I spoke to Porsche West London, parts dept and the man on the end of the phone didn't seem to understand an M16 nut was 24mm wide, not 16mm. Talking to him over the phone was unbelievably awkward, with him, the expert trying to humiliate my lack of knowledge even had an e mail at one point in which he was pointing out to me directly, with a diagram with the M16 x 1.5mm nut illustrating it was 16mm and that's where i was confused. I must say, I was taken aback by his attitude.
I got a replacement nut from Matt for £3
I cut the belts off.
The ac lock nut needs undoing all the way. There's loads of extra on that, and none anywhere else. The spline goes into the alternator shaft 4mm. A joke.
After carefully splitting the pulleysll, put them onto a bit of coat hanger to keep it all in order. The 3 bolts on the inner pulley are made of cheese.
I cut these of with a Chinese copy dremel that was £25 on eBay.
And genuine dremel blades. Soaked the stubs in penetrating oil and they came out using my fingers the next day.
Matt supplied these 3 bolt replacements and belts.
Had to remove the ac pump, didn't drop the square bolts once.
A pig of a job, that requires the patience of the Pope.
It took so long because of the rage producing problems.
Do it all before you have to at the side of the road, which doesn't look possible.
 
stuttgartmetal said:
It took so long because of the rage producing problems.

Haha, hate jobs like that! Good work getting it sorted buddy!
 

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