Ouch. Not a unusual problem on later cars. The reason is, have I heard, that the fabrikation of the latest type of fan wasnt good enough. The material can't stand the stress and cracks. This happens faster if the tension on the alternator-belt is too tight. This must always be checked everytime the fan are removed for some reason. A beginning crack typically looks like this:



The older type of fan dont have this problem, as it isn't made in one piece. It looks like this:



Sorry for the big pictures, I've just "borrowed" them from another site.

I don't think just looking at the fan pulley for cracks is good enough to be honest, the one on my car showed no signs of breakage when i put the plastic blades on and now it's broken there is only a 9mm long section which has obviously been cracked for a while, (the surface of the flaw has dulled as it's been exposed for some time. The best bet if to either X-ray them or possibly cheaper, Dye penetrant test them. Just having them shotblasted or acid cleaned should be enough to detect a flaw but I'm not going to take the risk again, I'm fed up of scrounging/fitting oil coolers now.

i want your bamboo

Had a bit of a suspension FAIL on friday, My plan had been to use AKS400 alloy spring mounts, as my car runs split cans and therefore the weight is all held by the rubber buffers that normally give the car its interconnectivity. This means at the moment, the first 2" or so of suspension travel has had very little to do with the springs and more to do with these rubber buffers, not ideal at all. The AKS400 can mounts sadly dont fit the smaller saloon cans, so I'm going to have to make something up to fit instead of the rubber, I think a small section of 60 or 75mm tube about an inch long between the can and the metal plate that sandwiches the rubber, instead of the rubber, welded in will do ok. I think it'll pay me to make it slightly longer than the uncompressed rubber too, as my car runs as high as possible now, with about 45mm clearance between chassis and road, so it'd be nice to have a bit more adjustment.

Also, anybody know a good graffiti artist? either in the uk or who'll be at the world meeting?

i know a great piss artist

We all know several...

lovely... i think....

my brother is Kinda good, i say kinda good as Im against it all and he has a conviction for it....