Fan Shroud Trick & Serpentine Belt
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Fan Shroud Trick & Serpentine Belt
Just wanted to share a couple notes after changing the drive belt on my 2009 5.4L.
First of all, I've never seen a belt damaged the way mine (original) was. It was split straight down the middle of the belt, around the entire length of it. It basically split into two individual, skinnier belts. Weird. Who knows how long I've been driving around with it, it was still working just fine.
Maybe all of you guys are aware of this little fan shroud trick, but I wasn't and when I discovered it I was frickin' ecstatic! Apparently Ford gave us a break and made it easy to rotate the entire bottom half of the fan shroud out of the way and give super easy access to the belt tensioner and for routing the belt. Sorry for the crappy pics, but laying down under the truck with the phone, this is the best I could do.
Here's a shot of the bottom of the fan shroud, for reference (note the white oil filter for orientation ref.):
Now follow the contour up until about halfway "up" the shroud. You'll notice what looks like a seam and then you'll see the head of a black plastic snap bolt toward the radiator side of the shroud (pointed out here):
It doesn't take much force, just an upward tap or two by hand on the bottom shroud section near this point and you can feel/see/hear the snap bolt get free. Repeat on the passenger side. Now before you can rotate the bottom half "up into" the top half, you need to make sure the retention tab is free of the little metal crossmember (reference the middle of the first shroud pic).
When free, it swivels like a dream on the "hinges."
You can see it gives you great access and tons of room to work:
They even gave us a couple of tabs that hold it "open":
One last detail pic where you can see the "hinge" in the top right:
First of all, I've never seen a belt damaged the way mine (original) was. It was split straight down the middle of the belt, around the entire length of it. It basically split into two individual, skinnier belts. Weird. Who knows how long I've been driving around with it, it was still working just fine.
Maybe all of you guys are aware of this little fan shroud trick, but I wasn't and when I discovered it I was frickin' ecstatic! Apparently Ford gave us a break and made it easy to rotate the entire bottom half of the fan shroud out of the way and give super easy access to the belt tensioner and for routing the belt. Sorry for the crappy pics, but laying down under the truck with the phone, this is the best I could do.
Here's a shot of the bottom of the fan shroud, for reference (note the white oil filter for orientation ref.):
Now follow the contour up until about halfway "up" the shroud. You'll notice what looks like a seam and then you'll see the head of a black plastic snap bolt toward the radiator side of the shroud (pointed out here):
It doesn't take much force, just an upward tap or two by hand on the bottom shroud section near this point and you can feel/see/hear the snap bolt get free. Repeat on the passenger side. Now before you can rotate the bottom half "up into" the top half, you need to make sure the retention tab is free of the little metal crossmember (reference the middle of the first shroud pic).
When free, it swivels like a dream on the "hinges."
You can see it gives you great access and tons of room to work:
They even gave us a couple of tabs that hold it "open":
One last detail pic where you can see the "hinge" in the top right:
Last edited by spydyrwyr; Mar 9, 2013 at 12:41 AM.
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Joined: Jun 2008
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From: College Station , TX
The 9's and 10's had different fans? Hmmm, learn something new everyday.
As far as belts splitting like that, I have heard of that before on other belt driven equipment (cooling towers, fluid coolers, condensers).
As far as belts splitting like that, I have heard of that before on other belt driven equipment (cooling towers, fluid coolers, condensers).
