Extruder fan failure

Fixed it already, but just a warning to anyone who has this issue.

If your extruder suddenly seems like its stripping too easily or losing power, and if you go to tighten it and you realize, hey, that thumb screw spring thing is oddly loose..  could it have backed out that far by itself?

These may lead you to then going to slide the extruder to the middle of the frame to go and unclog it. And then you burn yourself on the motor.  And then realize that the whole assembly is around 150 Celsius because the damn fan stopped spinning.  Sigh.

I knew I heard a faint rattle from it.. I just figured it was 'printer noise'. Its hard to hear once the door to the enclosure is closed.

Now thankfully I put a new fan on and it seems to be okay.  Its odd, however, because it made me think I had a jam, but in reality the filament was melting in the area where the notched gear/bearing is, causing it to fold up as if it was clogging.  The motor also lost strength when it got that hot.  All seems to be well now, however!

Just sucks because I was six hours into a seven hour print..