After pulling the fan and fan clutch out a while back I set them on a shelf sitting flat with the the mounting flange down. A few weeks later I found it had leaked at least some of the magic grease out.
Question 1 - can it work OK with some grease missing?
Question 2 - if it can, is there a way to check it without putting it in the car an running it? Note: There is some resistance to hand turning the fan when it's bolted to the fan clutch.
Question 3 - does the fact that grease leaked out indicate bad seals and therefore it just has to be replaced? Note: bearings seem fine as I could not feel any looseness on the shaft.
Question 4 - if it does have to be replaced what is the proper replacement? There seems to be a lot of options out there. The car is a 1980 L82 and thus has a auxilliary electric cooling fan (which to my knowledge only came on once, which was 34 years ago after I shut off the car while parked in a field behind a barn following a few miles of darting around country roads at 3 AM for reasons best left unsaid). The fan is 18.5 inch, 5 blades. Original radiator was triple core aluminum (now copper replacement). I've seen options listed for with and without heavy duty cooling but haven't been able to determine if I have heavy duty cooling. The options I've found are GM p/n 88961768 and 14047080. Below is an image of the original fan clutch.
Thanks for any guidance you can provide.
______________
As it once looked and hopefully will again
