Ferrari Mailing List: loose electric fan (driver side)

[Michel Savard (mysavard]

1981 308 GTSi: Found something very strange today. My driver side electric fan (tav 118 #32) was loose on the floor (I don't have a better word). I've had the car for 13 years now. How long has it been like this ? I guess I'll never know.

 

Here is how it happened. I had to change my orange side marker light on the passenger side. I took the front gravel guard off and quickly saw that was not the way to do it. I needed to take the grill on top off. Unscrewed the 4 screws and piece of cake changed the side marker. I did a little cleaning up with that front gravel guard off. Vaccuumed the whole area, repainted the part.

 

I decided to do the same thing on the driver side. As soon as I took the left front gravel guard off, I saw the electric fan was loose on the floor. Wow! What a surprise! This thing has been bouncing around for weeks ? Months ? Years? I'll never know.

Anyway, it is held on by 2 screws on the frame with 2 sort of rectangular plastic brackets glued to the hard plastic fan shell. 1 bracket unglued itself entirely from the fan shell and 1 bracket broke near the screw area holding it.

I went back to the right side and quickly noticed it was a different system. Like it's been repaired before. It looks like 2 L shape steel brackets were screwed to the fan with 2 screws (on long side of the L) and 1 screw  each on the short part of the L  attached to the frame. Hope I made myself clear.

 

My question is, whoever did this had to drill 4 holes through the electric fan plastic shell. But this is ALL PLASTIC. What's the safest way to drill holes through plastic ?

 

Thank you!

Michael Savard