Thinkpad t30 fan issues

I have a older IBM Thinkpad T30 (pre Lenovo). While it is not a power house it does every thing I need it to do for school.

My problem is the cooling fan has started to get noisey. Kind of a grinding sound. (actual computing performance does not seem affected...) I opened it up and used some caned air to blow out all the dust (there was a lot...). put it back together and it started to do the same thing once the processor got warm... I am a bit leary about trying to remove the fan unit since it looks like it would require a complete disasembly of the laptop.

And if I do need to replace the fan unit where in the world would I find a replacemnt?????????

Any advice out there on what I should do.

Wow this is the first thread I started where I have not had any responces...... Well cant expect every question to be answered.....

it'd be a pain to take the whole thing apart. maybe you can put a resistor in the fan cord to lower its speed and stop the noise. You said it happens when the cpu gets warm so if you keep it off full speed it should be good.

I would just replace the fan assembly.

It's not at all painful to replace the HSF on those modules. Back when I worked with them, I could replace the planar(mainboard) in less than 25 minutes.

The instructions for the procedure are readily available in the HMM:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/92p1840.pdf

Look at section 1100 under Removing and Replacing a FRU. Cost will be about 30.00 on ebay.

any ideas on where I could get my hands on one???


edit: aside from Ebay..... I have yet to have a good experience with ebay...
Way to many scams there.

http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...maxRecordsPerPage=50&SortProperty=MetaEndSort

replace the whole set up. keep the heatsink as a back up just encase. never attempt to fix these things, they are not worth the time. cheaper to replace it.

http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...maxRecordsPerPage=50&SortProperty=MetaEndSort

30 bucks is way too much... just find a dead laptop of that model maybe