front wheel bearing - special trick

[eedneco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Neil Cotie)]

Hi all,

I'm catching up on digests - so scroll on if this
has already been discussed...

Rich Hirsch wrote, in v7 #290:
"I must say I found the job of changing the
front bearings on my '87 Milano Pt quite difficult. This is due mainly
to the difficulty of knocking out the outter race of the larger
bearing. There is only a very thin circle of the outter rim visible,
and almost any tool that can sit comfortably on the rim of 
the race is too fragile to apply enough force to dislodge it.

Apparently other cars use hubs that have a couple of notches to allow
using a fairly stout punch to remove the race. I did this job some
years ago and remember using a sacrificial drill bit to drill thru
the hub near the race rim to create my own notch large enough for
a small punch.
"

My 2 cents/ 3,6 pfennigs:
Another option is to make a special punch for this.  It takes
a couple of hours but then you have a special tool for life.
A piece of flat bar stock, perhaps 1 inch (2,54 cm ;-)  wide,
can be profiled at each end with an angle grinder, to give
a nice radius to just fit on the rim of the inner race.
Then weld on a scrap bolt of reasonable size, perpendicular
to the bar.  Then hammer on the bolt end to push out the
race.  This has the advantage of knocking out the race straight,
and it will not jam in the bore.

ascii art:

                     ----
                     [  ]
                     [  ]
                     [  ]                 <= bolt
                     [  ]
                     [  ]
                    /    \                <= weld joint
              ------------------
             /                  \         <= profiled bar stock
             --------------------          side view (edge not face)


Another option that I have used when the size of the race was
convenient is to use a number of correctly sized carriage 
washers (large diameter, small hole) tightened on an appropriate 
fully-threaded bolt.  The fabrication time is shorted but you 
need to find the correct size washers.  Keep on eye on the edges 
of the washers as they are normally not very hard and
will not last as well as the ground bar stock option (sic) 
described above.

Cheers,
Neil

Aachen Germany

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