my 98 tacoma has a really really loud fan, my buddy can hear me coming all the way down his street but his 97 taco is almost completly silent. im kinda stumped as to why this happens

 

Bad fan clutch.

 

yep bad fan clutch. I replaced mine a few months ago due to the same symptom (sounds like a mack truck). $100 give or take and a one beer job.

 

is it a pretty simple fix ? i really havent got in there to look at it yet

 

I like my truck sounding like a MACK, TYVM.
heh..j/k


sorta.


I dont think they are a big job. probably a couple hours if you dont know what you are doing.

 

I would not drive it at all until fixed. The fan wasn't designed to spin that fast if it's completely locked, and it's plastic and 10 years old. If it breaks, it will hurt everything around it.

 

The fan certainly is designed to spin that fast. When an engine gets warm, what do you think the point of a fan clutch is? Its to lock the fan to the pulley so it spins fast and cools the engine off.

If its constantly spinning at a high rate of speed, pulling a lot of air, just simply replace the fan clutch. Its a fairly easy job requiring only a few tools and about an hour of time. Fan clutches can even be purchased from Toyota fairly cheap, and they work much better than those universal pieces of crap you can buy at Schucks or any other parts store.

 

As far as I know, and from what I observed myself, it's a viscous coupling clutch, NOT a direct coupling clutch, so the fan never spins at 1:1 to the RPMs. I'm very sure that plastic fan will not take even 3-4K RPM, even when brand new.

 

all I know is that fans blowing up is bad and if it happens and you get stuck in traffic, watch that temp guage so you don't overheat. and x2, it's not a hard job. pull off fan, pull off clutch, replace clutch, replace fan. dun, get beer

 

eh....I drove around for a year with a bad fan clutch.

Replacement is fairly simple. There's 4 nuts I think holding the clutch/fan assembly to the pulley. I had to use a wrench since there wasn't enough clearance for a socket. Pull the whole thing off and there's a few more nuts I think holding the clutch to the fan. There's a few that hold the clutch to the fan and a few more that hold the clutch together. Only unfasten the ones holding the clutch to the fan. Look at your new clutch to figure out which ones are which.

I had a hard time getting the fan/clutch assembly off of the pulley. After taking the nuts off I couldn't yank the thing off. I ended up putting the nuts back on, but not tight. I ran the engine for a couple seconds and let the fan pull itself loose. Probably not the safest way to do it but whatever it worked.