It has become cold up here and salt has hit our roads, so it is time to park our cars. Went outside to start mine up noticed clutch fan was leaking. It is a standard duty clutch fan because I do not have airconditioning. This is a street car and will eventually get it to the track next summer, but mainly a street car. Should I replace it with a heavy duty clutch fan or just go with a spacer and use the existing fan? When I went looking around town here alot of the guys were saying keep the clutch fan , it is a better set up. So I thought I would just see what you think here and if I went with no clutch fan what size spacers are you guys running that has switched from an oem clutch fan. Thanks for any info

 

Use a clutch, no question.

 

Ya I was leaning that way, only thing I figure is upgrade it from a standard

 

I wouldn't bother with a heavy duty fan clutch unless I was having problems with overheating, going to install A/C, or going to tow something. A heavy duty fan will make more noise, use more power, and pull more dust into the engine bay.
If the leakage is just a slight wetting it might last a long time still, but get a new one for a quick swap when it goes.

 

I just did an engine swap last spring and I did not upgrade the rad. I said if I have any problems with cooling I will upgrade. I should have upgraded it from the start as it is an original 84 rad and probaly only cooling 40 percent effecient. It was running a little hot when sitting, and not alll the time some days it never got hot. Well unfortunatley my brand new water pump left me one day with only 500 miles of driving on it. Blew out a back gasket. So when I recieved my new water pump I put in a new becool rad. I never had a chance to run it in any hot weather yet. But what I have seen it isn't heating up near as much even at idle. The clutch fan has a slight wobble to it too, when I seen the leak I checked it and it moves a little more then my liking. I did not notice a leak during engine swap or rad change, so I really never pulled on it to hard to check for a wobble. Probaly why it was running a little hot before at different time, the clutch fan was getting ready to leave me. There is not to long a time frame between any of the instances. Thnaks for the input guys