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What is the test for a fan clutch?
#1
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Year: 1992 & 1995
Model: Cherokee
What is the test for a fan clutch?
I have been searching the archives an hour now and can't find the description of what a working fan feels like hot and cold.
Just replaced the clutch fan (along with everything else in the cooling system) with a new one from NAPA and it is quite stiff to turn when the engine is cold but after a ten min. drive and engine up to operating temp. the fan is very easy to spin with engine turned off, that doesn't sound right to me. Shouldn't it be very stiff as if locked to the water pump?
Thanks,
Chris
Just replaced the clutch fan (along with everything else in the cooling system) with a new one from NAPA and it is quite stiff to turn when the engine is cold but after a ten min. drive and engine up to operating temp. the fan is very easy to spin with engine turned off, that doesn't sound right to me. Shouldn't it be very stiff as if locked to the water pump?
Thanks,
Chris
#3
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Year: 1998
Model: Cherokee
Engine: 4.0L HO
A safer way to check the fan clutch is with the engine OFF, give the fan blade a spin by hand.........it should stop in less than one revolution, if it's still good, keeps spinning if bad. A viscous fan clutch is never locked.......if it is, that's bad.
Last edited by djb383; 01-20-2010 at 09:00 AM.
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Jmz Miller (06-18-2021)
#7
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Year: 98
Model: Cherokee
Engine: 4.0L
Stick a broom handle in your fan clutch hold it tight and start engine if the broom handle kicks out of fan blade your clutch is good if broom handle does not move your fan clutch is bad.
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Year: 1988 limited
Model: Cherokee
Engine: 4.0 litre
Technically speaking, the fan hub has an automatic clutch that is made by a disk rotating in a viscous thermo-hardening fluid, when the temperature reaches xx the viscosity increases and the hub housing where the fan is attacched is dragged together with the hub.
At temperatures lower than xx, or when the clutch is bad, the viscosity is not enough to drag the fan, and will just spin slowly for inertia.
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Year: 1998
Model: Cherokee
Engine: 4.0 HO
For that matter, I wouldn't recommend sticking ANYTHING in there, even card board. That fan can be dangerous, you know that illustration on the shroud of peopls fingers being severed? Yeah, that thing can take off your whole arm, lol.