up grade fan blades

35 rancho

35 rancho

Member
I'm peacing together a 35 pickup. i have a refreshed 1940 block and runing a fan on gen. The blades are pitted from rust and afraid of failure. Is it feaseable to remove the rivets and replace blades with new? Has anyone tried this with success? Speedway has quite a varity of replacement fans. Thanks Dave.
 
35 rancho said:
I'm peacing together a 35 pickup. i have a refreshed 1940 block and runing a fan on gen. The blades are pitted from rust and afraid of failure. Is it feaseable to remove the rivets and replace blades with new? Has anyone tried this with success? Speedway has quite a varity of replacement fans. Thanks Dave.
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I would just buy another nice '35 fan, they are not that hard to find. I see nice rust free originals with out cracks or bent blades at swap meets all the time. Keep your pickup all original. My uncle had a '35 pickup with a flathead with speed equipment and it cooled just fine with a stock fan.

To answer your question. You can grind the rivet heads off and bolt a different fan on there. I have never tried it with an aftermarket fan but I have mixed and matched early Ford Fans and spacers for different hot rod projects.
 
We have some of those early gen mounted fans. I have some NOS and some nice used. There were a couple types with different depth spacers at the center. You should use the same as what you had in place. Check with us Monday if you don't find what you need elsewhere.
 
Dave,

Measure the distance from the front of the blades (lay it on a flat surface) to the generator pulley mounting surface and place a wanted ad. Much easier and cheaper than trying to fix the old one.

Charlie Stephens
 
If Mac has a good used or NOS I would get it. Put the rusty one on and check the clearance of the blade on the coil or distributor at the bottom. and when adjusted for the fan belt the distance under the top tank, There were 2 types of top tanks. The fan should clear the radiator at the closest point by about 1/2". There are also differant diameter pulleys for the generator so you need to decide that. A fan with more blades normaly delivers more air and cools a little better but the 6 blade Ford fans that fit a 35 make way to much noise for me. G.M.
 
Thanks everyone. I'll be getting the gen and the distributor back soon. then I'll install the new radiator with hoses and double check clearances and go from there. Good info thanks again
 
You might want to wait on getting a fan until you have the engine in and see if a stock fan will clear the 24 stud hoses. If you install a go fast intake, some of these intakes raise the generator mount enough that the fan will hit the hoses, also original belts will be too short. I’m not sure about ‘35-’36 Fords but I had this problem on my '32 Roadster project that has a 24 stud engine with an original Edelbrock Slingshot intake and an original re-cored radiator, the fan hit the hoses. I ended up buying a damaged '32 V8 fan to get the long spacer hub and then cut down another early ford blade and bolted it to the hub. I did not have the heart to cutup an original '32 V8 fan since they are hard really hard to get.
 
The only six blade fans I had were the 39-40 style that mounted directly to the crankshaft pulley. All the gen mounted fans are 4 blade. They're not real big diameter (15-16" as I recall) but as I said....they do come in two hub sizes.
 
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