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Follow Up On the Bearing Replacement
Well. That was kind of anti-climatic.
Being aware that things are a bit hard to press off, I moved the bearing splitter up to the "spacer", or "retaining ring". Put a fair bit of pressure on the handle of the Atlas and gave the top of the ram a solid whap (with my odd heavy double faced Estwing I found in a telephone booth about twenty years ago and have never seen another), just to get things moving, which they did.
Got a deeper bite with the splitter as soon as I had a little room. Still worried about putting too much pressure on it, both because I don't want to shell out the bucks for a new one and because I don't want to share a confined space with an OTC splitter that has received enough abuse to come apart.
The retainer was on there pretty firmly, I grant you, but it came off without much argument and no damage.
The inner race needed a little more persuasion. Put the torch to it, with a modest tip, for maybe 30 - 45 seconds each in the two places available between the jaws of the splitter. The splitter had a pretty good bite on the race so I felt free to bounce lightly on the press handle. The race cracked loose and moved fairly easily once it was started.
The new bearing went on quite easy, with light lube on the axle just to be sure nothing galled. The retainer impressed me. Lubed the axle again, but it still took notable force to push that bugger on. Didn't try a file on it, but it must be fairly hard and damned tough. Don't need to worry about the axle falling off with that retainer on the job!
Anyhow. Just getting in another view on rear axle bearing jobs. The only reason I can imagine for not pressing bearing and retainer off is if you don't have access to a press. But then, how would you put the stuff back on?
Chuck
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