ENHANCED FAN AND FAN DRIVE ASSEMBLY

摘要

A fan drive assembly including a cooling fan (11) and a fluid coupling device (13). The cooling fan includes a fan hub (17), a spider (15), and a plurality of fan blades (19). The coupling device has an output coupling assembly (21) including a body (23) and a cover (25). The body (23) includes preferably only three mounting portions (67), each being disposed immediately adjacent an outer periphery of the body. Each of the mounting portions (67) defines the necessary machining chucking surfaces (73), and a spider mounting surface (75) including a pilot surface (77) engaging the pilot diameter (79) of the spider (15). The body (23) includes cooling fins (61) covering substantially all of the rearward surface (59) of the body not covered by the mounting portions. The fan hub (17) also includes a rearwardly extending air dam portion (81), limiting localized radial air flow. The present invention is able to improve the radial air flow through the body cooling fins and achieve substantially greater heat dissipation from the fan drive assembly, thus permitting greater fan speed for a given input speed.