2006 Sprinter: Coolant fan and clutch replacement
I read somewhere replacing the coolant fan and clutch in a 2006 Dodge Sprinter is as easy as changing the fuel filter. In hindsight, maybe it's easier. True to whomever suggested that, it's at least as easy.
Since replacing the coolant hoses and refreshing the coolant, our van has begun to run hot. Like, the engine temp would easily run over the dreaded third line on the gauge (i.e. 215+ degrees) climbing any sort of hill in pretty standard temps.
I did the ol' cardboard test on the coolant fan: with the fan spinning, stick a piece of cardboard in its path. If the fan stalls or stops, the clutch is faulty. If it shreds the cardboard well, the clutch is a-okay.
Ours failed. The fan ground to a halt before slowly spinning back up again. It was time to replace it.
While I was replacing the fan and clutch, I opted to also replace the serpentine belt. I'm not sure how old that thing is and now I have a spare.
The tools I used were:
- 8mm hex wrench (for the bolt holding on the clutch)
- Giant slip joint pliers (to hold the spinning part of the water pump from rotating while loosening the 8mm bolt; it needs at least a 4" opening, hence the giant-ness)
- 17mm 12-point socket and 18" 3/8-drive breaker bar (for the belt tensioner pulley)
- Smattering of sockets + wrenches to remove the grill, headlights, and metal bracket holding the intercooler + radiator
I know a job is easy when I go to start it before dinner and end up basically finishing it beforehand. It took maybe half an hour. I ended up holding the belt cylinder of the water pump with the giant pliers from underneath the van while K loosened the 8mm bolt. It definitely helped loosening up the bracket holding the intercooler and radiator, then pushing all of that forward which gave me a few more inches to work. Also, before splurging on that 20" slip joint pliers, I tried a rubber strap wrench I already had. No joy. It couldn't get enough of a grip to hold the clutch and break the 8mm bolt free.
With the old fan out of the way, the belt was a piece of cake to remove and replace with the new one. Million Mile Sprinter even includes a sticker with the belt diagram which I've plastered on my mechanics cart.
Before installing anything, I compared the old parts with the new ones.
It’s always nice to find genuine OEM parts when I take something out of a vehicle. Which of course either means its an original part or it was serviced by a reputable shop.
Removing the shroud was in fact the biggest pain of the whole job. Full transparency: I cracked it along the top putting it back in. Since it's actually a benefit to have a shroud in two pieces (some go to the extent of deliberately breaking it and machining parts out of angle irons or such to hold it together), I left it.
The new fan and belt looked good.
I fired up the engine. Then redid the cardboard test. The result: this fan blew through the cardboard. Everything was good to go.
Yep, easy peasy. Or so I thought…
/// Epilogue ///
That was last week. Fast-forward to this past weekend.
When I started the van after finishing the installation, everything looked and sounded good. However, when I applied gas pulling out of the driveway to go camping the new belt squealed pretty obnoxiously. Yikes.
I replaced the serpentine belt (along with the alternator, both sourced from the local AutoZone) in our 2001 Toyota RAV4. It never made a squeak. After a few minutes of driving the van, the squeal disappeared entirely. Ok, weird.
The van ran great the hundred-ish miles to the trailhead where we were camping. Worth noting: our engine held almost rock-steady at 180 degrees, even climbing Blewett Pass at 60+ mph. The new clutch made all the difference.
The next morning, chilly and wet, it squealed again as I pulled out of the parking lot. Then disappeared a couple minutes later.
It repeated this each time I started it. So when K and her co-guide Jason, who has also worked on his fair share of vehicles, met up with us back at the trailhead I asked him about it. He took a look and was convinced I had mis-threaded the belt. So we rethreaded it under the top idler pulley. I fired it up and pulled out again. No squeal.
But wait, there's more.
A few seconds later there was a snap and the battery light came on. Oh, and I lost power steering. Clearly, the belt had shredded.
I knew just as instantly I had, in fact, threaded it correctly. Now mis-threaded, it couldn't handle the extra tension and snapped. There we were, on the top of Snoqualmie Pass off the side of I-90,with a dead-in-the-water van.
Thankfully, my buddy Michael and his family had just left their house twenty minutes away to come join us. I frantically called up the Napa store in the town they lived and confirmed they had a belt. Phew. Michael picked it up for us and delivered it (along with our long-lost growler I had left in his truck over two years ago when we went for our annual ski tour).
With Jason's help below and mine from above, we were able to thread the new belt, again, correctly the way I had it. I fired up the van and… no squeal. It's worked great since.
I'm not sure what was up with the first new belt. It was a Continental and this new-new belt a Napa part (the noiseless new belt for the RAV4 was a Duralast). But who knows. Maybe it breaking saved us from it doing that down the road or heck, the aggravation and embarrassment of a squealing belt every time we drove away from somewhere.
All's well that ends well, I guess. The good news is our van is running once again like a champ. Next up: fixing the rumble strip noise…
