While I had the 145 out on her first voyage after having reassembled everything under the hood, I eventually began hearing spontaneous rattling and clunking that got bad enough to make me take a look under the hood (luckily I was right next to home at the time). I noticed that the cooling fan was rattling around and had almost totally worked its way off the water pump pulley assembly!



So I pulled the radiator (again) and pulled off the fan clutch assembly to examine the parts and see if it was just a loose bolt. Everything seemed alright as far as I could tell until I tried reassembling it again.



The notched cap (pic 3) is what I assumed was supposed to clamp against the inner bearing in the fan clutch assembly (pic 1) and hold it rigid with the input shaft (pic 2). I slid the clutch onto the shaft (pic 4), slid the cap into the clutch (pic 5), and tightened the bolt (pic 6), only to find that the cap did not actually compress against the bearing at all before the notch bottomed out on the shaft! There is about a millimeter of space between them, which allows the clutch to have a small amount of axial play. The clutch isn't snug on the shaft either, so the entire assembly easily spins and rattles on the shaft even with the bolt fully tight.



I'm a bit confused by this since these were the original components that came with the car before I did the whole disassembly, and it never had this issue before. Perhaps I am missing a critical part, like a thin compression ring between the shaft and the bearing or a fit washer that sits between the cap and the bearing??? Did I even assemble this correctly to begin with???



Any help would be appreciated! Thanks a bunch!