MTFCA Forum

Couple years ago I machined fan bushings and a new bolt. All is good. but when I sleep this car is running
the roads even out of state by my youngest hatch-ling. Example being a retired cop my bro's stop by the shop and say what you doing riding around at 3AM? say what; I'm long in bed son. Now my fan is toast my
king pins toast my front tires toast, and this kid has a job, I do not. OK rant over. what do you think about
those new sealed bearing aluminum fan hubs? (1923) since this kid don't grease nothing just spends his pay
check on ebay for foolishness, god forbid not tires....Second rant over. Ya I got cabin fever. Oh well 4 more
months until 'so called spring time'

IMO, the modern fan pulley with sealed bearings is the cat's meow.




Have rebuilt the Ford alum pulley fan with new bushings, and new shaft. Proud of repair, pulley spun real free, and no wiggle. Added the heavy oil to the reservoir and went off touring. About 200 miles or so, terrible squeal from the engine! Wife wondered that we had engine trouble and got the cell phone out of the purse! Couldn't turn the fan by hand, took off the belt, no more pig squeal.

Found that the pulley bushing had seized on the shaft. Either my ream job was off, or belt too tight, or whatever, that fan was frozen up.

So opted to replace it with the modern one, no troubles for thousands of miles now. Good product!

As for your cabin fever, can understand. Today its nice and sunny, but little breezy 61 degrees out, so will leave the top up for the Sat. afternoon cruise in the touring.

I have been running one for over 10 years without a problem. Also rebushed with new shaft another T and have been running for over 20 years without a problem. I suspect your ream was off. Same thing can happen with transmission gear bushings.
Norm

I’ve used those two needle bearing units on fans of all my Model Ts for years now. Buy them from a bearing house. Then I cut down original bronze bushings where there’s only 1/8” behind the flanges.They’re now just spacers. Never had any problems and have taken all T s in many tours

George, could explain you retro fit better with bearing numbers and photos or drawings? I have to do something with the fan hub on the race car. Thanks

I have genuine Ford fans on all of my cars, and have no problems with them. The '25 has oil in it for the NOS Ford bushings that I installed, and my two '13s have the correct brass fans. I just twist the grease cups once in a while. The '13 touring has the same fan I put on it over 55 years ago, and is still going strong. You can't beat that.

The major issue that people have had with the aluminum hub fans siezing up over the last 30 years or more is due to defective new bushings. Many of the fan bushings sold by the major vendors come from the same source and are made of a poor quality brass. This is not a suitable bearing and they usually fail quickly. The fan bearings need to be bronze just like the transmission bearings. The poor quality fan bushings can be identified by their color. They are lighter in color than new transmission bushings and if you look at them with a magnifier you can oftentimes see little rusty or oxide specks in the metal.

In the last 10 years, I’ve probably restored 25 or 30 fans and have been installing a similar flanged bronze bearing that I order from an industrial supplier, not from a T parts vendor. I finish the bore on a Sunnen Honing Machine and set the clearance at .002” to .003” larger than the shaft. I have not heard back that any have failed.

Another important aspect is the fan shaft. If you have an original Ford script shaft and it is too worn to re-use, make sure you check it against the new one for hardness. Scratch the original and the new one with a fine triangular file on a non-journal area to do a basic hardness check. If the file has more drag and cuts the new shaft better than the old one, then you know the new shaft may not be hard enough to be a good journal. In this case it would be better to try a different vendor for that part or try finding a usable Ford script shaft.

Good to know. Thanks for posting Adam. I can never understand why some makers of reproduction parts are not careful to match materials quality to the original. Truly one must be one's own quality control, or failures will likely result.

Good point Rich! I wish more vendors would follow what you just said!

Bob Bergstadt has the formula for the Z Bronze that Ford used. You should contact him to see if that is what he is using for his fan bushings. The ones I put in my 1925 fan I bought from his dad years ago, and are genuine Ford.

Sounds like you need to make the young one replace the bushings and show them how to use an oil can under the threat of not being able to use the car again. Sounds like they get enough milage out of it.

Mindless Automaton wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:40 am

Sounds like you need to make the young one replace the bushings and show them how to use an oil can under the threat of not being able to use the car again. Sounds like they get enough milage out of it.

You got that right 'all right' : I been staring at many idler and tension pulleys we have in stock manly for
302/351 serpentine small blocks. The bearings look right and they will take way more load than a T fan.
Can't find any in stock aluminum that size, for a fan pulley so I may go the dreaded Ebay route. Shame
once a time would be within a mile. Now these recycle'rs have it -I see it but will not sell it even if I double
the scrap price...I do not get it..... Please tell me It's "me" lets say they pay 5 dollar a pound for some cut
off round aluminum and I say I give you 15 bucks for that cut off'''''' Nope. sounds like some money laundering
going on..

$56 to Langs buys an aluminum pulley with proper crown for the belt and a pair of sealed bearings. I have a complete machine shop and considering my time, material cost of aluminum, plus bearings, I would not make it for that price. For my tour car, I got out my wallet and am very happy I did. Too many other more interesting things to do...

Scott_conger wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:57 am

$56 to Langs buys an aluminum pulley with proper crown for the belt and a pair of sealed bearings. I have a complete machine shop and considering my time, material cost of aluminum, plus bearings, I would not make it for that price. For my tour car, I got out my wallet and am very happy I did. Too many other more interesting things to do...

If Samuel has a lathe and would rather make his own pulley he should be encouraged to do so not discouraged.

Samuel, If you don’t mind to post photos as you make your pulley I’m sure a lot of folks like myself would like to see your work.