Technical Catastrophic water pump failure

Back in the 70's, had a customers 360 Plymouth with a factory flex fan. One of the blades fell off, without any damage. The vibration was so severe, it felt like the engine was going to hop out of the car.
Amazing how much vibration one little blade can make.

 

A killer to any bystander. A former neighbor was trying to track a noise under his P/U hood.
It was a blade, caught his neck, left side. A gusher,
Took Him down His neighbor from across the road, was passing by to his 1/4 mi. drvway.
If the neighbor had not served as medic in 'Nam,,,, , , , , well you know.

 

That way they can tell him directly it's his fault ..LOL..

 

Most of aftermarket fans have a warring label
To Not exceeded 6,000 Rpms.
& Check out fans , I have seen the Smash Rivets
Not correct size ,nor smashed formed correct

 

Gotta love the inclusion of Richard Feynman with the demonstration of the o-ring failure with the glass of ice water and the small C-clamp!
Knowledge is power!

 

Call your insurance company. Worth a try.

 

What? is there some insurance company that covers mechanical failure?

 

So, was I the only one that checked their fan today?

 

The day just getting started here Est
For most ,8:30 am
Your are 13ish or so hours ahead in time in the down under, 10:30 pm

 

I will do that. Fan is rated 6,000 rpm. I was nowhere close to that. Looking more closely it was metal fatigue for sure. I’m beyond the one year warranty and best that Derale will do is send me a new fan. All other damage is excluded from coverage. Thank you for identifying the cause of this.

 

Mainly so they know they have a problem....if yours broke, it's likely that others did/will, too

 

Had a similar thing Happen, of course, when I was in passing gear floored, a water pump bolt backed out and hit the fan and the same thing happened. The fan blew apart and went to the Fender in my El Camino.

 

It would be interesting to closely inspect the other blades at the same point of failure on the hub to see if any show evidence of distress.

 

Thank you to all who took the time to reply. The fan certainly appears to be the culprit. I was in passing gear for maybe 2-3 seconds before this happened. We have about 4500 trouble free miles logged so far including a cross country trip to the Street Rod Nationals earlier this year. I’m grateful no one was hurt and at least it happened close to home. So I’m thinking mfg. defect and not my driving.

 

Hello,

Our old cast iron one piece water pump was good for 120,000 miles of short and very long distance driving adventures. In rainy weather, snow, icy conditions and of course beautiful sunny days of trekking. Some of the places, Mojave Desert were in extremely hot weather. The local mountains created a different elevation pressure format, but the one piece cast iron water pump just kept working like new. But, it took from zero miles new to 120k of hard driving to have a leak. No explosions as it was a one piece 327 SBC water pump.

The last time I saw the final repair is when I shut the hood and 5000 miles later, sold it to a young kid from Dana Point at 125k miles.

So, not saying it could have been a fan blade breaking first, but could it have been a faulty casting on the removable plate at extreme temperatures and continued usage? In all of the years driving with a one piece cast water pump, on all old chevy cars or other hot rods, we never had any type of blow out. Leaks, yes, easily repaired and reassembly was a simple reverse process.

Jnaki

So, why was it a two piece water pump? And two pieces give off twice the accident prone actions as a one piece cast water pump. There are such things as a poor casting on the assembly plant production line, so, this could have been one of those time. It just chose that moment to crack and the high pressure expanded the crack to a larger crack and a full big old hole. YRMV

 

THAT is a problem.
Will be interesting to see what the MFG says.

 

I guess you missed the first post, where he states it's a Zip water pump riser? They use a 6 cylinder water pump.

 

What would cause the metal to crack? If it was caused during manufacturing I think the crack would have been evident at installation. If it’s a metal problem and the crack happened over time the manufacturer might have several fans out that may fail. Recall? Is there any evidence of more cracks, can’t see in the pics.
Dan

 

Dan, The metal cracks over a long period of time due to flexing of the fan blades. At first the crack is microscopic but, as the metal is constantly flexing, the microscopic crack enlarges, becomes visible and eventually fails. Even if the crack wasn't caused during manufacture constant flexing after installation can result in failure. You can see it happen when you crush a soda can and then bend it until it develops a crack and fails.

Here's some good reading about FLEX FANS vs. FIXED FANS.
flex fan better than fixed blade fan - Search

 

Thanks
Dan

 

I also think thats what happened. When I was young, had an OEM fan break on a 327 in a 51 Chevy coupe. Had my girlfriend/future wife with me. Dark and no tools.....shook like crazy. Thought I'd never get the opposing blade to break off bending it back and forth. Drove ok after that.


Sorry to hear about losing the radiator too, those Johnson/Walker radiators ain't cheap.

 

That would explain why it was dark here when I replied!!!
As you probably know, we don't have those new-fangled "clock" things down here.

I can't help it if my today is your tomorrow. It's not my fault you are running behind........

 

In a friend's AMC 304 CJ5. Going down the road, it started to vibrate like hell. We pulled over and opened the hood. We didn't see anything wrong, until one of us noticed light through the hole in the hood. Passed through a hat channel, welds and the skin. Neither of us saw it go by. Right in front of us. It had some FPS for sure. I never lean over a fan and rev an engine after that. Would have cut you in half. Mike

 

Thank god no one was hurt. Sorry this has happened, however I am sure it can and will be fixed. I have seen similar failures over many years and unfortunately it is never pretty.

 

Worse yet your guys seasons are screwed up! Our fan failures seem to go up yours must go down lol
Dan

 

That's a better pic. Clearly shows no paint on 1/3 of the break.

 

Agree with the broken off fan blade causing the problem. The off balance created by the missing blade would cause a big mess especially when the engine revs increased. In the last century I had a fan blade break on my Ford flathead V-8 that loud bang sure scared the hell out of me but I was lucky one of the lower radiator hose's gave up its life the blade dug into that hose the radiator was saved. From then on I always look carefully at any fan blades prior to using them.
Ronnieroadster

 

I worked in factory maintenance for several years. Any time there was a machine failure that involved a crack, we had to do an inspection of the crack to determine if it was a one time event, or had been in the process for a long time.

ALWAYS, when you look at the broken surface, you can identify if the break was sudden or not very quickly.

If the entire length of the broken piece is bright and clean, it was an instant failure (in the original post, I suspect an inspection of the water pump's broken surfaces, will find the entire surface was clean and bright).

However if part of the broken piece is bright and clean, but part of it is darker and more dirty looking, the failure has been in process for some time. The length of time can be very hard to determine because of the environment the broken piece resides in. The more dirty the environment, the shorter time frame for the crack to get dirty. Generally, the fan area of a car is considered a clean environment, unless there is a significant leak of some kind.

When a crack starts, the dirt from the environment invades the new space in the metal. The dirt replaces the bright clean surface of the metal as the crack expands. As the crack grows longer (through flexing), the dirt still enters the first part of the crack, making it appear to be darker.

When you look at the broken part, the darkest part of the broken surface was the starting point of the crack, the part that is still bright and clean was the last part holding before the total failure. Usually you can see the progression of the crack based on the darkness of the crack surface.

Based on the pictures of the fan blade, the one side at the every edge the first 1/8" or so is very dark, that was where this crack started. The darkness grows lighter until you get about 3/4 across the surface, then that last 1/4 is very bright and clean looking. That was the last part to break. The entire rest of the crack has been flexing for some time.

I also suspect that the cracks at the mounting bolts are probably pretty clean and are probably a result of the fan flexing from the missing, or in process of separating blade (or even caused by the water pump failure). It would be necessary to at least look more closely at those cracks though. If those cracks appear to be more dirty then the crack at the blade, the fan could have started flexing there and caused the missing blade to come into contact with something that caused its failure to start. based on my 1st look at the mounting bolt cracks, it looks pretty clean, leading me to believe it was a result of the blade departing.

As a side note, should you loose a fan blade while on the road and are lucky enough that it didn't take anything with it on its departure, you will want to completely remove the fan and replace the bolts that held it in place (make sure the water pump can still turn). You will need to monitor the temp gauge, but as long as the vehicle is moving and doesn't over heat (220 degrees would be acceptable in this case), hopefully you can get home.