2.4L Taco Fan Clutch removal question

Hi new to this Form. i have 1998 2.4L SR5 manual trans taco that i have recently purchased and have started doing some maintenance jobs. does anyone have any tutorial on how i can remove the old radiator fan clutch? i have looked everywhere and the only thing i can find is on how to remove it all together with removing the radiator and the fan shroud. i understand that the shroud and the fan will have to be removed together. but i want to know if it is possible to do this without removing the radiator too.

 

I did this job recently. It's a real pain the ass and tight space to work in but you can do it without removing the rad. You have to remove the shroud and then you just need to use a hand wrench to slowly unscrew the fan clutch. We removed the fan itself and then the clutch which is a little easier, but the new clutch I got was slightly longer. When we tried to put it back in the way it came out, we couldn't fit the fan back in. So I would just put it back in as one piece.

Timmy is always a good resource on maintenance on these first gens (though his videos do get a bit wordy):

https://youtu.be/WzhlACxqeqQ?si=EOgAvQbYO33azow1

 

While all that is apart you can check everything in the front engine while there..

The pulleys....idle pulley bearings.....pulley wear...

oil leaks both high.....and lower around main seal and oil pump...

there is alot going on there......and usually gets neglected until.....

 

Good tests in tht vid^^^^

 

Depends how big you are!!.

The few minutes it takes for me to remove the radiator I am very glad for the room.

After putting a hole in the radiator anything at the front of the engine out it comes.

 

thanks a lot for this vid , very helpful. i actually thought it was a bolt that goes into the pully and not a nut, i think that makes it a lot easier specially when installing it back. i will try this method.

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Update! just finished installing the new fan clutch. i did exactly as @Taco_Love suggested. i removed the shroud bolts but did not remove the shroud all the way, i angled it in a way that i have access to get to the clutch bolts. i could not remove the clutch and the fan all together so i had to detach the fan from the clutch first. it made the job a lot easier, and gave me an easy access to the clutch nuts. i would say the only hard part was braking the clutch nuts off . they were there pretty tight so they cause the pully to spin if i apply force. i was able to brake each nut by holding one with a 12m to counter the spin and using another 12m to brake one nut. putting it back was simple. this fix did solve the heavy vibration issue i was having! the old clutch was bad and causing the fan to wobble which in turn was causing the vibration!. Thank you All again for the Help!