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Also noticed that I'm missing the bottom piece to the fan shroud. I've still got to look in the attic for it, but either I never put this piece back on the truck after doing some work a long time ago, or it fell off and I lost it somewhere.
I really need something in the old 4Runner, it has absolutely zero AC since we bought it in '08 (1993). Can't find R12 anyplace anymore, that stuff vanished before I bought any.
Ok, not much to really report yet, but I ordered 10k CST silicone fluid from Amazon and finally put the fan clutch back together. I used about 30mL of fluid. Hardest part of the whole deal was putting that rubber gasket back into the groove of the clutch, I swear it took me at least 45 minutes to get it to stay in there. First I cleaned the clutch as best I could with starter fluid and wiped it down. After that I just slowly poured the new fluid into the holes of the back piece, once the holes were filled, I just dumped the remaining fluid into the center and quickly put the top cover on.
I have driven the truck and I honestly can't say whether or not this has made a difference in the AC temps, if it did make a difference, it is small. My next step is to rent the AC gauges from Autozone and do the soak down test that Mike mentioned earlier in the thread. Hopefully that test either A. Frees a stuck expansion valve or I guess B. Tells me my compressor is weak. I wanted to get this fan clutch thing out of the way since it is cheap and should move more air across the condenser. I'll report back once I get the gauges and do the soak test.
Well, I started to make at least a little bit of progress. Mike suggested that I should change out the fan clutch fluid and it would make a big difference in the amount of air moved across the condenser. So I got on Amazon and ordered some 10000 cst silicone fluid and while I'm waiting for it to arrive, I took my fan clutch off and opened it up. That old fluid looks and feels like honey.
Thanks to Mike for the push. I'm going to do the hose soak on my condenser after getting the fan moving as much air as possible.
Wow, I went the lazy route and bought a new Aisin clutch fan.
Hey Cory Nice work on the Fan Clutch, Someday I'm going to have to do that. As you know I've been putzing around with some many projects I don't know where to begin or end. Rain put a stall to most of my projects. Listen I was cleaning out the garage and came up with some packing foam for a IBM Blade Server board. It had the right size foam to stuff around the radiator. I ended up stuffing between the front bar just below the condenser core. I don't like doing it, cause I am assuming this will retain water longer which in turn may turn into rust. On another note, the foam may also deteriorate quickly because it wasn't made for such exposure. I'll take a snap shot of it since I have the front bumper off it is exposed right now soaking water...
Hey Cory took a shot of that filler foam at the bottom of the condenser. I don't know what this would do to the radiator cooling as the foam takes up a lot of space.
You can see I also cleaned up some of the front end of the truck as well sense i had the bumper off to clean it and paint it. I'll probably paint the bumper a flat or semi gloss black.
09-21-2015, 05:25 PM
