Fan blade tip, missing

[scottmcphee]

I've got the plastic cooling fan, forget how many spokes, and just noticed the other day one blade is missing a couple inches off one tip. It's not a clean squared off break but a "V" shape break so one blade now looks split like a snake tongue.

I've got belly shields, and no bullet holes through the rad, so??? What caused this?

The reason why I noticed was because with engine stopped I was checking something else and noticed the fan sloooowly rotating and thought wtf!? I let it go and voila! The broken blade rotated to the topmost position because the fan was out of rotational balance and the lightest blade missing a chunk of its plastic "floated" to top position. Wow that tells me the fan is super well balanced.

To-do: install new fan.