It must be a Stovebolt moon tonight, I am like the 3rd person to have a fan question. This afternoon, I was driving to get groceries in my 47. In a matter of seconds, The engine started to vibrate, then BAM! I saw a piece fly away in my rearview. Shut it down. I thought I threw a rod. Turns out it was one of the fan blades. Destroyed my Hood. Walked down the hiway and picked up my missing blade. It had "tore" off. I am lucky that it missed the Hose by less than an inch. Restarted it to see If I could limp home. It felt like it was gonna shake her to pieces. Took off the fan, and rebolted pulley to pump. And drove home. Question is, was this common? Will a fan from a 54 235 work ok? I wish I didn't have to have one on at all, i think I gained 10 hp without the thing.

This is really too common for old fan blades. Was never heard of when the cars were newer. I always put a new fan blade on my old cars just for insurance.
In a nut shell the fans FOR PASSENGER CARS were the same from 1939 thru 1954. The 1939-1949 with optional 3.73 axle ratio had a fan with wider blades. I would avoid that one as it makes a lot of noise and dosen't cool any better.

You will notice that you will be able to drive it from now to July with no fan. The only problem is if you get into slow traffic on a hot day. It is necessary to put the fan blade bolts back in plave or the water pump pulley will eventually split. The engine will sould better now at high speeds but you can hear all the clattering when you open the hood and rev it up a little.

I put the one from the 235 on this afternoon. I failed to mention it was out of a truck. It wanted to hit the brace that runs across the Radiator. So I bent in the blades ever so slightly. Do you think that when I rev it up, it will straighten out and eventually hit that brace?

I Have NOS fan blades in you want one, email me bwbugay@aol.com

Use the correct fan so that you don't have to bend the blades and risk hitting the radiator brace.

Do you really want to find out?

Junkyard Dog has the right idea!!!

The answer to your question "Do you think that when I rev it up, it will straighten out and eventually hit that brace?" is: I don't know for sure but do know that it will straighten more and more the higher the RPMs.

Was the fan painted the same color as engine from the factory? The blue/gray color from Filling Station?

Thanks

The fan is semi-gloss black.

Thanks ruscar

I think that using the fan blade to turn the engine will severely shorten the life of the fan blades.

I had a similar experience going across WY in the 41 cabriolet I recently sold. Took the fan off and was doing fine for a while. Although the wind was blowing west to east at about 50 mph it seemed and I was heading west there was no problem for a while. Nonetheless, the temperature gage soon went up. Discovered water pump was now leaking. (I pretty sure the missing fan blade had something to do with it.) Fortunately, I was just outside Rawlings, WY on I-80. On Sunday but inquires led me to junk yard and where there were two employees who were working on their cars. They told me where to look and I got both the fan and a pump. Borrowed some Permatex from the guys and I put it on right there.

Later back home in NC, I eventually took the engine out and discovered the broken-off blade lodged between the starter and the block. I never detected any damage attributable to the flying blade. That was back in 1975. I was much more adventuresome back in those days. Now I take along a load of spare parts if I'm only going outside the city limits.

SM47 is right. That missing fan blade will cause the engine to shake more than Elvis from the waist down.

After the above experience, I never again used the fan blades to turn and engine.

Best,

Charlie