125 broken fan blade
 

I found a fan blade on the mower deck. I am not sure I have the ability to change the fan. Will I do further damage by running the tractor this way?

you might get away with it for awhile but you may toast the hydro pump. its pretty simple to replace I think, as opposed to ruining a good transmission.

If you only lost 1 blade and the tranny is nice and clean on the out side I doubt that you'll have a problem. I have a JD330 diesel that has the same style pump and they don't have a fan on them. Tractor is 1985 ish vintage.

Doesn't the 330 have a hydraulic oil cooler though? The gas tractors (i.e. 318) had a pretty big one... :bigthink:

No cooler.

Then how do you keep your cocktail cold?

:Welcome2: bill_stauty You won't damage anything if the other blades are still intact. However, if one blade broke off, then chances and you did not bump into or mess with it, chances are the plastic is brittle and others will follow. As far as changing it, you can unbolt the drive shaft from the back rag joint disc (2 bolts) and you should be able to slide it out. You may need to unbolt the engine (4 bolts from the underside of the tractor, just rock the front axle to get to 2 of the bolts and the other two are further back and easy to get to) if you need to unbolt the engine. Remove the drive shaft, knock out the roll pin on the front of the drive shaft (this may be the toughest part of the repair). Remove fan clip, slide old fan off after noting its placement on the drive shaft and the direction of the fan blades on the old fan. Put new fan on in same location on drive shaft and with the blades of the fan in the same direction as the old fan. Replace clip to hold fan in place, replace pin in drive shaft, bolt things back up and you are back in action.

Cub Cadet 123

Welcome to OCC Bill,

Lots of good advice so far.

You may want to do a little poking around to see if there is something that may have caused the blade to break.

There are any number of things that could have caused this to happen. Your 125 should have a shroud around the fan, it may have some loose or missing screws, the rag joint or other parts on the drive shaft could be in bad shape causing the shaft to wobble and the fan could hit the shroud. Take you mower deck off and look around under the tractor and see if there is anything that looks questionable. While you're there check to see how many blades are left.

If the fan has never been replaced it should be metal, those fans are usually pretty tough, the plastic ones are pretty brittle from the get go.

As the other guys have said, one blade missing usually won't hurt anything, one blade missing on a metal fan may give you a little vibration.

Not many problems with a Cub that the guys here can't talk you through, taking it apart or putting it back together, the guys will help you in either direction.

Morning Bill,

Welcome to the forum! Whole lot of knowledge here and a few antics to keep things interesting. I actually just replaced my fan on my 129 a few weeks ago. I had 3 broken fins... it was shameful really... PO said yeah she'll run just fine... its ridiculous... anyway... as stated before the easiest way to go is to unbolt the rag joint. I also went ahead and removed the flywheel flange and pulled it all out. I had a bolt insted of a dowel in my drive shaft which was a whole nother mess in its self. But everything slid out nicely that way. Like the other guys said the plastic fans are pretty flimsy even when new. After I got the new one on the drive shaft two of the retaining tabs just broke off after I got the snap ring on.... had to order another fan and do it again... so be gentle. Wish someone made a metal one. Anyway let us know how it goes.

Matt

When you replace the fan with the driveshaft out, take a good look at the shaft hub that is still bolted to the engine. Look at the slot that the shaft pin rests in. The cross pin wears into the hub slot over time.
If it was me and the wear was like half a pin diameter or more, I would replace the hub or weld up the wear in the hub slot and grind and file back to original shape. The pin in the shaft is cheap so I would replace it while it is on the bench too.
And look at the rag joint and replace that too while it is accessible.

Oh and degrease/pressurewash up in where the driveshaft ends to clean out the years of dirt and dust likely insulating the hydro unit.