Antec900 Top "big boy" fan came off. Loose bearing? Not sure.

[altruist]

Howdy, TH. So the past few days my top case fan (aka the big boy fan) on my antec900 has been making these nonstop clicking noises so I decided to take matters into my own hands and did a little check up on it. When I began handling the area around the fan I could see the fan was basically loose and hanging by a thread while still spinning. I tried to force it back into place by kind of pushing it upwards and the fan + bearing came off. After several attempts I was unable to put the fan back in place and get it back to how it was before all this nonsense. It would simply not stick to the bearing attachment and would basically hang then fall off.

I have currently completely removed the fan from the case and the bearing is still on. Would it be possible to reattach my same fan or should I be looking into replacements? Thank you for reading.

 

[BFG-9000]

The clicking is when the fan is hanging too low/far from the motor so should go away once that's fixed. The fan is held on the shaft with a plastic circlip that's probably broken off. You can make your own circlip from a tiny plastic washer and stack extra washers in there to shim it to the height you want. Oil it up and it should last as long as a new one, which is $22