,
In order to remove the fan shroud, we’re going to have to remove the clutch fan. The fan is reverse threaded with a 32-mm wrench, so we’ll be loosening to the right instead of the left. The problem is that the fan obviously spins, so applying torque to loosen it isn’t going to work.
What a BMW instructions manual would most likely tell you is to use a special tool that holds the fan in place so you can loosen the nut. However, because of my previous days messing with E36 M3s, I remembered to simply give the wrench a good whack to free it up. If you choose this route, make sure to protect valuable car parts, like you see we did here with the Castro Motorsports intake plenum. After about four to five tries of whacking it as hard as I could, the nut came free.
For me, it was much easier to remove the fan and shroud together, rather than trying to slip the fan out by itself first.
With the shroud gone I now have access to the top of the lower passenger-side radiator hose. Here I can simply flip the metal spring clamp to unlock the hose, like I did with the other earlier. The only problem this time was that the hose was on so tight I couldn’t free it from this angle. There wasn’t enough room to gain any leverage with one hand to pull the hose free.
As a result, I decided to free same hose from the top portion, which goes to the water pump. With a stubby screwdriver, I had easy access. The plan now was to remove the radiator with this hose still attached to it…
