Dreaded wheel bearings..

[honda900]

Had to do wheel bearings on sunday, smart, replaced the entire hub on the disk brake front set and had the cones inserted from the place I bought them from.

Lazy hub, had aready got a shop to remove and insert cones on one of the two hubs and had just recently done the bearings in it so all was good.

Last wheel, have to remove the cones, After 1 hour smashing the crap out of the cones with my pin punch set, decide have had enough of this will duck down the road and buy a lazy with the cones already in it.

Well apparantly in capalaba there has been a rush on hubs, ford bearing, HT thread pattern. mmm... well will have to wait..

Get home, talking to my mate about what a bitch these cones are to get out, remember the old cold chisel . Whip out the cold chisel, in about another hour after smashing the crap out of them, finally get both cones out..

Now all I got to do is fit another set and all is good, Welll smack the crap out of the new ones with the cold chisel to insert them, finally after an hour get them both seated properly. Takes me no more than ten minutes to reasemble the wheel, all is good..

There has to be a better way to get these mongrel things out / in to the hub, what am I missing in this picture..

Yes I know that you can buy a new hub with the cones in them for $30 bucks...

Regards
HOnda

[ozbee]

run a light ring of weld on the cone face throw some water on it presto they fall out leave a bit of grease on housing if you are a bit wably with the stick.

[Benny01]

you sound rough as

[honda900]

Benny01,

Assume that was directed at me, but no, not rough as, when I say I belted them I got the cold chisel on the lip and gave them a good whack, rotated the hub 1/8 of a turn and kept going.

Bloody long job for such a simple thing.

Regards
HOnda

[FNQCairns]

Benny01,

Assume that was directed at me, but no, not rough as, when I say I belted them I got the cold chisel on the lip and gave them a good whack, rotated the hub 1/8 of a turn and kept going.

Bloody long job for such a simple thing.

Regards
HOnda

That might have been the trouble (cannot know for sure though). An alternating wack near 180 deg to the last is the go, 1/8 each time may have locked them up??????????

cheerrs fnq

[trueblue]

you sound rough as

welding a bearing race to get it out is not rough at all... standard mechanical fitter trick to get a stuck bearing race out. it shrinks the diameter of the outer race.



Hitting a bearing with a cold chisel is as rough as...

A cold chisel has a similar hardness to a bearing race - this means that the bearing race will be damaged - you might not notice it, but the bearing will fail prematurely. You must always use a softer material as a dolly to knock a new bearing race in. Preferably you use a piece of mild steel pipe that fits veary closely to the largest diameter of the bearing to ensure no point contact.

Using a cold chisel you also risk chipping either the bearing or the chisel and flicking that into your eye or somewhere else undesireable.

If it was that tight that you had to flog the hell out of it that badly, the diameter of the hub may not have properly matched the bearing. (machining tolerance issue)

cheers

Mick

[poundalead]

Get a spare cone and grind it down on the outside so that it fits easily in the hub and use it as a punch. I did that for my trailer it took no more than 2 hours to do the whole job. It's a messy, crap job to do at the best of times. When you put the new cones in apply a bit of grease too so they slide in a little better.

Cheers Benny

[honda900]

The cold chisel I used was softer than the bearing race, Had to re grind the face quite a few times to keep a square edge on it. so no problems with chipping of anything.

Geez was hoping someone would say go and by tool X as this is the tool for the job.

Thanks poundalead, did use grease, didnt make much difference to be honest.


Regards
Honda

[trueblue]

The cold chisel I used was softer than the bearing race, Had to re grind the face quite a few times to keep a square edge on it.

Sounds like it was too tight in the hub then. It shouldn't be that difficult.

How tight did you do up the locknut?

Cheers

Mick

[honda900]

Mick,

not sure what lock nut your talking about; if you mean the crown nut, I wind it on till there is no wheel movement horizontially then relase it quarter to half a turn until the wheel spins freely, just past the slightest of movement and no restriction.

Regards
Honda.

[trueblue]

"Castelated" is the proper name for the type of locknut that holds the assembly together.

Backing it off is the way to go, as it is better to be looser rather than tighter.

cheers

Mick

[trueblue]

Just a shame hearing the exercise being called "dreaded". It should be a fairly simple exercise, just a little bit dirty

Cheers

[tunaticer]

A spot of weld does the trick everytime to remove a race thats stubborn. Its probably the safest way of removing a race as well because you run nearly zero chance of a drift/chizel.punch shard coming off and taking an eye out or embedding deeply in your person somewhere. Yes this does happen quite regularly. In the past 5 yrs 3 of my workers have had shards of hammers or chisels of punches surgically removed from thier persons, luckily none from the eyes yet.

Brass is probably the safest of drift materials as its not hard enough to send a shard off either a bearing or the hammer face and itself is durable enough and ductile enough not to shard with any great forceful speed. Hammers are probably the worst implement for throwing a super sharp and super fast shard.

A light application of Neverseize will let you replace the bearings in the future with minimal problems.

Jack.

[Robbo_Townsville]

It is a pain of a job but necessary. I now use dura hubs.

[iceknight]

cant you just press them out? i know i can press mine out. iv never known a bearing in a hub that cant be pressed out.