Fan shreds while crossing stream

I drove through a stream crossing at Coney Flats and my fan blew up. You can hear it in this video, shot by a friend of mine, right as I enter the water. I didn't notice it at the time, but a few miles later my engine overheated, so we opened the hood and noticed that the fan had no blades left on it; they were all torn off and scattered about the engine bay. We let the engine cool for half an hour and then drove down the rest of the trail carefully, managing to keep the engine perfectly cool all the way to town. I ordered a new plastic fan, but I was wondering if this is a common problem, and if so, what precautions I should take to prevent it from happening again, other than avoiding deep water crossings.

The truck spent the first decade of it's life in Arizona, and the fan blades were discolored, and possibly brittle, from all those years of desert heat combined with engine heat. Maybe I'll be fine with a new plastic fan.

Any suggestions?

 

You're lucky you didn't put a hole in your radiator. Yes that's a pretty understood occurrence.

Electric fan with a kill switch...

 

Ah, electric fan with a kill switch sounds really smart. It did put a few very minor nicks in the back of the radiator, but nothing that bad. I'll research installing an electric fan with a kill switch.

Thanks.

 

Sorry that sounded chiding. My point was it does happen, it might not always happen, but it does happen.

Electric fan is the way to go to eliminate the potential.

 

So while not cheap, it looks like the Flex-A-Lite electric fan, along with a

$174 Flex-a-lite 31165 Variable Speed Control Module

Flex-a-lite 31165 variable speed control module and a Flex-a-lite 31148 manual on/off rocker switch, would do the trick. It would be nice if you could just pop the hood before crossing deep water and disengage the belt-driven stock fan.

 

I had a similar issue, except it ruined my radiator... Stay out of deep water.

 

Just did the loop yesterday and today.

I couldn't believe how deep the first creek crossing was on the Camp Dick side. Much deeper than Coney Creek (featured in the video in the OP).

First creek crossing: