There is an excellent wiki by Saint.v8 on radiator removal and fan which gave me the confidence to do this work. Thanks.

I bought a tool off ebay (about 17quid - a quick search would find the one I mean) which had 32mm spanner (blue handle) and a device to hold the fan pulley by two of its 4 bolts (long bar with hook on end - red handle). See photo.

The red handle bar was no good (but I thought I may modify it if no good).

Initially nut would not move - tried hammer trick and jamming the belt.

I eventually undid the nut...

1. squirted some wd40 on end of long screwdriver and let it drip carefully onto the 32mm fan nut and soak for 15 minutes

2. long 30cm+ flat blade screwdriver inserted/jammed horizontally (9 o'clock) from LHS (looking from front of car) between the 32mm nut and 1 of the 4 nuts on the belt pulley. My gut instinct was that this would make it almost impossible to turn the nut. But you only need to do it until the nut cracks off and if you rotate the pulley you will eventually find a place where screwdriver perhaps sits on 32mm nut corner rather than on the flat.

3. 32mm spanner on nut at about 12 oclock and for those of you who are unsure which way to turn it, it is left hand thread meaning you turn spanner clockwise when looking from front of car.

Inspiration for point 2 came from video on you tube of a guy doing this on a BMW.


Happy fan removal.