Got the van back up and running today, with a few caveats and comments:
- First problem: the viscous fan seems to run continuously now, with the coolant temperature at 45 degrees F. It's not quite as loud as I remember it being when idling on a hot summer day, so perhaps it's only partially "coupled" rather than full speed, but there's noticable airflow under the hood- I don't remember that happening previously but it's possible I'm mistaken. I did clean the fan with a wet paper towel and dish soap, and noticed peanut buttery dirt packed in around the sensing coil so I carefully cleaned that crap out with the pointy end of a zip tie. In general I was careful to store the fan in the upright position as suggested here, however I briefly (5-10 seconds) laid it down during the cleaning process. Did I ruin the fan? It looks like it's due for replacement anyway, so I probably made the wrong call and should have just ordered one as PM.
- The original belt is a Contitech Conti-V 7 PK 2035 (made in Germany). The new Contitech belt is a Contitech 7 PK 2035 (made in Italy). However, up close they look substantially different. The original is black rubber with seven very clear "V"-shaped notches in its cross section. The new belt is more of a felt-impregnated gray color and the seven ribs have a more vague "D" cross section. I ended up using the new belt, but I was surprised at how different they looked. I searched briefly, but couldn't find anything about what changed.
- The fan bearing bracket was slightly different in that it had fewer threads and a shoulder where the fan pulley mounts. It looks like the newer casting includes more metal in the corners as well, presumably for additional strength.
- There was a little weirdness in how the fan bearing bracket is built. There's a tiny 'daughter' bracket that screws into it, and then a big cast aluminum tube on the front of the engine screws into the daughter bracket. So you begin by removing the large diameter long screw through that cast aluminum part. The rest then comes out as a unit once you've undone the 4 smaller screws that hold the bracket. One of those screws is shorter than the other 3, so be sure to keep track of which is which.
- The fan belt was a nightmare to get back on. I tried to install the new stretch belt first but gave up on that after realizing how much shorter it was than my old belt. Even getting the old belt on didn't go smoothly. I burned through about 30 zip ties trying to walk it back onto the fan pulley but I must have been doing something wrong. I finally succeeded but the belt was offset about 3 grooves from where it needed to be and it took me a lot of failed attempts to figure out a way to move it over. What finally worked was twisting the belt 45 degrees and jamming it in the direction I wanted it to go just with my bare fingers on one hand while using the other hand to turn the crank with a 27mm socket.
- The serpentine belt was a piece of cake. It went on according to the diagram, starting with the inside-out horseshoe bend that hooks around the tensioner pulley. The hardest part was getting it over the final pulley (I put it on the A/C pulley last), but once I got the edge of it to hang on I spun the crank by hand a few times and it walked right into the grooves where it needed to be.
- I noticed the new idler pulleys are narrower than the original equipment. They seem to be exactly the width of the belt rather than a couple mm wider. Other than detail that the markings and construction seem overwhelmingly similar.
