Does anyone here know much about fans?  I acquired a couple of 9" Galaxy fans in excellent condition.  Unfortunately both rattle a bit.  One of them would make a clinking or clicking nose a bit like a hard drive seeking.  I planned to oil the bearings to see if that'd help, but broke the blade attempting to remove it.  I wrapped a washcloth around a wrench handle and tried to free it, by wedging it between the retaining nut and the blade.  Obviously that was a big mistake, too much torque.  You're supposed to yank it straight off.  That's what I did at first, and I tugged until the plastic began digging into my fingers.  Then I put on work gloves and pulled until my shoulder began to suggest it might go before the blade did. 

Here's the other, same fan, Panasonic brand.  Are the noises here pretty typical or does it need lubrication?  I hope it doesn't, because as with the other, I cannot remove the blade by hand.  My shoulder still isn't quite back to normal after that first one.

These fans use to have all pretty the same construction...
There are three sources of clanking:
First deformed fan cover cage, so it collides with blades when the rotor moves axially.
Then loose connection rod and the gearbox pushing the motor shaft axially (there is a wormgear first stage of the gearbox) as the resistance varies along. To some extend it is normal, but sometimes the holes in the connection rod may wear out.
Then an increased resistance, causing excessive axial liad on the motor shaft, pushing it axially too far (normally the magnetic flux is supposed to hold the rotor axially in place when running, but it has obviously limited strength, mainly at low speed setting).
The gearbox is supposed to have a bunch of grease inside, you may checkhow it looks like.
Then when you remove the connection rod of the crank mechanism, you may check whether the fan head pivots freely.
In any way it is not necessary to remove the fan blade rotor for this. The crank is accessible from the bottom, the gearbox from the rear, after removing the back cover (one or two screws holding the cover on the gearbox case). Removing the back coveruses to ease the access to the crank as well...

the reason you cuuld not get the nut on the blades loose is probable becoase you turn it to the left to tighten and to the right to loosen.

The nut wasn't the issue.  The blade slides on and off.  I had only installed a couple days before and it was almost impossible.  The more weight I put on it the more it slipped around on the top of the shaft.  Finally it slid down.  Maybe it would have been a good idea to put some kind of lubrication on the shaft itself, something safe for plastic.  I've seen no indication that the blade is not intended to be removed following installations, and have watched videos of others removing these by merely pulling them, but mine would not budge.  I suspect the fact that the blade was tighter than average due to it being freshly installed.  Often these are only disassembled years later.