Friday evening leaving work, the truck was making some weird sounding noises, stuff I hadn't heard before.

Thought it was a water pump, so I pulled it into my buddy's shop. We figured the pump had crapped the bed, so we parked it, and got a new one in the morning, with all new accesory belts and timing belt.

The fan was rocking back and forth and it increased in violence with RPMs.

Come to find out, once we had the front end disassembled and all the belts pulled, etc, the water pump is solid (amazingly, after almost 100K miles, the timing belt is, too!), but the pulley that the fan clutch sits on has spun an internal bearing. Unfortunately, can't find a clear pic to show.

The local Toyota dealer won't sell the pulley and mount without the fan clutch, etc for less than $750! NAPA has just the mount/pulley for $140. guess which one I went with.

Part should be in tomorrow AM, truck back on the road in the evening.

Aside from replacing the thermostat, the belts, and all, anything else I should be looking at while in the front end? I was idling low, but I'm thinking the timing belt replacement and new pully should fix it.

 

FWIW, this is the part, the fan idler bracket:

http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/im...nt/T313501.jpg

 

Yeah some call it a fake water pump. It's ridiculous that Toyota won't sell the part by itself and many have turned to an aftermarket replacement (including me). Unfortunely you can image if the quality oem Toyota part doesn't hold up the cheap made in China replacement will likely fail much sooner. There was one guy last week that had one fail and he wasn't too happy about it:
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f2/b...racket-128850/

I haven't had a problem yet with mine but I removed the fan from it and run an electric fan and that takes a lot of the stress off of it.

 

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about it, Goat. But at the same time, the $750 for the OEM part is a bit daunting to say the least. Especially since I don't have that money laying around.

I intend on going to an electric setup at some point, but I'm not able to do it now. Rediculous that Toyota only sells it with the whole assembly. Hell, a fan clutch isn't more than $50...

 

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=629590

 

you are lucky you found the aftermarket part. i have seen alot of guys get a used one from the junk yard, trying to avoid the 750$. i guess the aftermarket got smart and saw a market niche! mike