This past week has been quite an education in auto mechanics. A huge shout out to Dad for pushing me to find out the "real" story and not just accept what the mechanics say and get "taken". After speaking with Chris and an independent auto mechanic, it became clear that I myself had to go and look at the damage and ascertain what I could. During my lunch break today, I went down to the dealership and took a look at the car. By the way, I was all worried about storing the car at the dealership was taking up space, well, not an issue. They park all the cars to be serviced on their huge roof, so the car is sitting there, one of over 50 cars to be worked on. It made me feel better about taking my time on this issue.
I opened up the hood and quickly saw that behind the radiator (on the passenger and driver side of the radiator) there were two side-by-side plastic fans, which are powered by an electric motor. Oh, how about some pictures, shall we?
There is the plastic fan, with the round electric motor. The two are bolted (4 bolts total although you only see two in this picture) to the shroud, which is those gray things going off to the left and right.
The picture above shows us what a properly mounted fan motor assembly should look like. This is the fan on the drivers side. Going over to the passenger side, here's what we see.
Uh oh.....no bolts to be seen.
Another look, and again, no bolts
So, being the deductive thinker that I am (you Geometry students, if you are reading this should know what I'm doing) looked around to see what this unbolted fan motor assembly might do. Well, first, gravity took over and the assembly, when properly mounted and centered spins the fan, blows air and touches nothing. With no bolts to keep it in place the fan motor assembly simply slumped down and...
The radiator fan grinding right onto the bottom of the radiator shroud. Notice how the fan carved into the shroud cover.
In addition, the fan motor assembly also pitched forward and began to grind against the radiator itself.
Fan grinding on radiator.
It was this action that led to the sequence of events that caused the overheating of the radiator and potentially blowing the head gaskets. Well, it looks like I'm going to work with Subaru of America to try and invoke the warranty because it appears that when the mechanic in Indiana reassembled the radiator, he probably did something here to cause the bolts to be loose and eventually undo themselves. We'll see where we go from here.....
I opened up the hood and quickly saw that behind the radiator (on the passenger and driver side of the radiator) there were two side-by-side plastic fans, which are powered by an electric motor. Oh, how about some pictures, shall we?
The picture above shows us what a properly mounted fan motor assembly should look like. This is the fan on the drivers side. Going over to the passenger side, here's what we see.
So, being the deductive thinker that I am (you Geometry students, if you are reading this should know what I'm doing) looked around to see what this unbolted fan motor assembly might do. Well, first, gravity took over and the assembly, when properly mounted and centered spins the fan, blows air and touches nothing. With no bolts to keep it in place the fan motor assembly simply slumped down and...
In addition, the fan motor assembly also pitched forward and began to grind against the radiator itself.
It was this action that led to the sequence of events that caused the overheating of the radiator and potentially blowing the head gaskets. Well, it looks like I'm going to work with Subaru of America to try and invoke the warranty because it appears that when the mechanic in Indiana reassembled the radiator, he probably did something here to cause the bolts to be loose and eventually undo themselves. We'll see where we go from here.....
No comments:
Post a Comment