Rear Axle Strip Down - Part 5

For those of you who have been following my build blog, you may recall that I was left scratching my head regarding how to remove the lower fulcrum taper bearing races from the rear hubs (See Rear Axle Strip Down - Part 2).

The bearing races have to be knocked out from behind - but due to the configuration of the lower fulcrum shaft housing - getting a drift down the shaft housing from the opposite side and then engaging in the slot behind the bearing proved very difficult.  Jaguar probably have a special tool for this but I couldn't find anything useful on the internet so some improvisation was required.

The first attempts involved the use of a large flat blade screwdriver - I could just about get the blade to engage on the back of the bearing race but any attempt to apply some force with my large hammer, just resulted in the screwdriver slipping off the race.  I did persist with this approach for some time until I had had enough of hitting my thumb and forefinger with a 1.5kg hammer......

While idly flicking through my latest Toolstation catalogue I came across a pry bar set - which is something I probably need anyway and I thought the smaller of the set might just have enough crank on the end of it to get some purchase on the back of these troublesome bearing races.  

Pry bar set was duly purchased.  When I picked it up I was rather surprised by the size of the box it was in and was worried that I had made a bit of a mistake and ordered some industrial sized pry bars by mistake.  As it was the largest of the set is rather mighty in size but the smallest one did look as though it might do the job.

And it did!!  On three out of the four taper bearings....

It wasn't all plain sailing and generally required a lot of hammering, alternating sides (and plenty of swearing when I hit my thumb / fingers with hammer) but eventually I managed to knock out three of the races.  The fourth, however, seemed stuck fast.

Every now and then, in amongst my other jobs in the garage, I would pick up the hammer and pry bar and bash the hell out the final bearing.  And nothing!  Not even a sign of movement.

Eventually I was hitting it so hard that the end of the pry bar gave up and just curled over.....

Guess which one I was hitting....

I decided to give up on a rear attack and go for a full frontal assault.  I bought a small 2-legged hub puller off Amazon hoping that the jaws would be small enough to fit into the recesses behind the bearing.  I did have to grind the ends of the jaws down slightly to fit and it was very fiddly trying to keep the jaws hooked into the recesses while tightening up the puller - I used the largest pry bar from the set I had bought across the front of the bearing recess for the puller to bear against.

With everything in place I started tightening up the puller, expecting a bit of resistance at first but anticipating the crack when the bearing race would shift slightly in the housing.  I got lots of resistance - to the point where the puller started to deform - but no crack and no movement of the blasted bearing....


Back to the drawing board........