It's 34 or 35mm, in fact; mine isn't marked, so I'd have to measure it, and I'm undressed for bed now.

But in fact the problem is *holding the fan pulley in place if you have the belt off (or it's broken)*.

There's a special wrench for that that goes over the bolt heads... and none of the borrow-tool sets (or even the ones you can buy--*my* Autozone's loaner kit didn't have the right wrench) have that; it's a dealer tool.

In practice, my problem turned out to be that I couldn't break the bracket bolts for love or money, so I ended up towing it to my mech.

He fixed it, and driving home it blew the lower radiator hose. And the next day after he fixed that, it blew the MAF intake preheat coolant hose.

<sigh>

 

It's 36. And he's telling you (quite correctly) that the Ford set the AutoZone loans out is the proper one for holding the fan pulley in place by the bolts.

 

And yet, amazingly, I wasted an hour and a half borrowing it and trying it, and -- mirabile visu! -- it didn't work.

 

I guess you did it wrong.

Oh....lookey here. I still have the kit, since I haven't returned it. And a water pump.

72mm spanner. One bolt in a corner, the other one catching the side. Breaker bar on the spanner. Push down hard while using another 36mm wrench on the fan nut.