Fan Destroyed my Radiator
 

I was driving home yesterday and heard some weird noise under the hood. the next think i know i am getting a low coolant reading and my fan blades are all over the place broken in pieces. How does this happen? Anyone have the same experience?

I'm not familiar with the E53 and the fan/radiator clearances, but typically on other vehicles it is due to loose bolts connecting the fan or a failed viscous coupler which allows the fan to have too much freeplay forwards and backwards.

How are the belts? On Occasion, a broken fanbelt can also get entangled in the fan blades, breaking them.

And sometimes a fan blade just cracks and fails, causing failure of other fan blades.

Also if the fan clutch (viscous coupler) locks up it can spin the fan too fast while driving and cause the blades to fly off and bust through anything in their path. I've seen this at least once or twice in the past at the shop.

Also caused by failed bearings in the water pump.

most likely fan clutch went out on you and the fan wobbled and BAM, parts flying everywhere...into your radiator, possibly hoses...

You will need to buy a fan, fan clutch, radiator, might as well change all the coolant hoses, and since you're there and havent changed your waterpump. You can change waterpump, thermostat too. If you wanna go even further, change the valley pan gasket. This is my prediction, dont take my word for it, but like weasel said, ive seen it happen

http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...ndle-cold.html

THis happen to me this winter when it was about 5 degress out, I have not put my fan back on my car warms up faster which is needed due to these 15mins drives to work becuase of stupid oil seperator design. Its also very quiet now. I have had it like this for about 3 months now after I replaced radiator, While I was at it I chnaged the water pump and alternator. I live is a mild climate and have kept a really close eye on my temp guage and shes been fine.

I've seen pictures and horror stories of people fan blades getting weak and breaking, taking everything in it's path. The worst I've seen was blades actually penetrating the hood. Be happy it only took out plastic instead of the hood. These are all issues we've dealt w/ over on the 5 and 7 forums, so a lot of the things I've seen will start happening here soon. A lot of members on here would benefit from seeing some of the items written up on www.e38.org for issues and repairs since most of them apply to the E53 V8's since we share the same engine.

Don't our fans (being different than the e38) have the outer ring connecting the blades specifically for this reason? Would this point more towards a foreign object than a locked clutch? :dunno:

The mechanical fan that is attached to the waterpump via viscous coupling/clutch is the basic design fan, not ring connected. The ones with the outer ring connecting the blades are the electric fans.

Although I have considered replacing my mechanical fan with en electric puller fan simply wired to a thermostatic control... would be easy to do and could free up one or 2 HP by putting less load on the belt most of the time. I know the AUX fan already does that, I'd likely set this one a couple degrees cooler and use it in addition to/in place of. But that is on the back burner, for a future job.

Weasel, that's very interesting... I'll post a picture of my mechanical fan tomorrow when there's daylight. If our mechanical fans don't have a connecting outer ring, then I have something very different on my X.

o/t: FWIW, I ran without the mech fan in the winter to see what would happen. (At the time, without understanding how the system worked) No noticeable change in engine response, and the X warmed up quicker. No overtemp, but it was winter. Now understanding how it works, I realized that that was pointless. (Doh)