Xantia radiator fans (again)

[evilclive]

About a year after nicking the fan from the spare Xantia (W reg Hdi 90) and putting it in the running one (X reg Hdi 110), it's died again. I'm not really up to dismantling and changing the brushes, so time for a new one.

Any recommendations on where to buy one?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NRF-Radiator- ... Swu1VW4Lio

looks like two fans and the plastic thing holding them on, and claims to fit. While I didn't enjoy the bolts holding the fans on that much, replacing the housing looks like even less fun (bumper off and more?), so does anybody know if the fans on there would come off and go onto the original housing?

cheers,
clive

[evilclive]

Nobody seems to know so I decided to give it a go.

The answer is yes, they do. You do indeed get two fans, motors, and a giant piece of plastic. It's not perfect - the power connector is on a wire rather than being attached to the side of the fan and won't reach round to where it should plug in, so you need to move the car-side of the connector from the housing, plug it in, then cable-tie it all in place, but that works. Also the metal isn't exactly the same - it doesn't sit quite so nicely in the housing, but it'll do.

The bolts holding it in place on the supplied housing are M5 with crossheads, but the holes are 6mm, so I got some 25mm M6 bolts and nuts and used them. Being a nut and bolt they can go in either way - I chose bolt facing forwards, ie bolt head on the difficult side, nut on the easy side. 25mm doesn't hit the fan blades. It's quite nice being able to just hold the hard-to-get-at end in place while ratcheting up the other side rather than turning that impossible nut 1/12 of a turn at a time.

The motor seems faster than the old one, and it spins for longer. (faster at both low and high speed). And that flashing STOP light has stopped - well, till the other motor dies, anyway

[white exec]

Did you ever test the original two motors individually, by applying 12v to each one?
If the usual twin fan arrangement (motors in series = low speed, parallel = high speed), then one motor failing will prevent slow speed running, and therefore give the appearance of the fans compleyely not working.
In parallel (at high temp) the good fan should still run.

That Mister Auto item is good value, for what you get.
Although a bit of kit common to several cars, the wiring length/connector arrangements do vary between models.

[evilclive]

Oh yes, I know how the high/low speed works - I went through all that last year when I first decided to see about my flashing stop lights. I might have poked it into high speed via a lexia to identify which motor was knackered. I'm pretty sure I've replaced the right one - both high and low speed now work.

The one I've just replaced had done 200k+/17 years in one car, so I'm not entirely surprised it decided it was bored of turning.

I actually got the thing from arksglobal on ebay in the end - just under 110 quid.

[white exec]

Good result. Hopefully another 17 years!