Mike Simard

I have some rear hubs that have an inner race stuck to them and I'm about to consider them scrap.
I welded some lugs to the race for a puller. I can tighten the puller to the point of things about to explode and it wont budge until I heat the race dark red, then it will creep off about .5mm and get stuck again requiring more heat. At this rate it would take hours.
I consider this much heat to be too much for the hub so will scrap these.
Has anyone ever seen this?

GregBBRD

Only if the car had been run at Sebring.

Seriously, whenever we ran the 12 hours of Sebring, the bearings and uprights were so pounded, we just had to throw them away.

BTW, Mike.....you want to heat the aluminum upright, from the outside, not the races.

Hold On

My thought exactly must be a typo

Mike Simard

This is the inner steel hub that has a race stuck. The car is a street car of unknown history.
If I had an outer stuck in the upright, I'd weld a bead around the race and let it fall out but that one came out fine.

Lizard928

You can use a cut off disc and cut most of the way through the race to lessen the clamp.
I normally just weld a ring around it with the mig then turn it over and it comes most of the way off.

Sounds to me like that race might have spun on the hub and partially fusion welded itself to it......

Tony

OH boy...and as I type I have two hubs in front of me that I just pulled. Hopefully this isn't an omen for me as I haven't attempted to remove the race yet. My bearings came out fine though.

dr bob

Mike-

In my wayback days I got to remove Mopar rear axle bearing races once in a while. Those were roller bearings, and the inner race would become one with the axle if left too long. The secret was using a sacrificial chisel to distort the race some. Put three radial wedge 'cuts' in the ring with the chisel, evenly spaced around the ring. It distorts and maybe grows the ring enough to get it loose from the axle (or the hub in the 928), making it possible to draw the ring off more easily. For the 928, I added heat quickly with a torch to the ring to grow it some more, then drove the ring off with a hammer and the chisel as a drift.

Tony, there's a bearing splitter in our B90 kit compliments of Dave (Sharkskin), and a few other pieces that should help yours come off. If you have a MAPP-gas torch (Home Depot item), use it to heat the ring quickly after you have some tension on the puller.

Bill Ball

I've done just what Colin suggests, using a Dremel with a small fiber cut-off disc to cut 3/4th of the way through the race then hitting the cut with a chisel, the race snapped open. No damage done to the hub. Other times there was enough of a lip on the race that I could drive it off from behind, again using a chisel, just enough to lift it off base of the hub and then grab it with pullers. In your case the cutoff wheel is probably needed. Even if you happen to nick the base of the hub, that's not a bearing contact area, so no harm done.

BC

Always pressed out fine. But you are talking about the metal hub right?

dr bob

The outer half of the inner race comes out when you extract the hub from the bearing. There's no way that I know to avoid it. That part of the inner race has been "pressed" onto the hub by the 300+ lbs/ft of torque on the spindle nut, all but friction-welded by all the miles of driving and vibration as the wheel turns and the bearings wear.

Mike Simard

I call this part that contains the wheel studs the "hub".
I always call the aluminum part an "upright" but that's just me standardizing terms to be universal. Upright is used widely, is there a better name for the "hub"?

Here's the hub-thingy with lugs welded to the side of the race and puller in place at the point I gave up.

It's for a special project so I'm making new hubs from titanium (which will probably get even more stuck in this case and require machining the race away)

BTW, the gray powder in the pic is dry 'moly' powder to act as a lubricant.

Mrmerlin

use a cut off wheel and make a slice into the race
< then use a chisel to split the bearing

Mike Simard

That does sound like a good idea. I just tried it for posterity, nearly cut through the race but with the .5-.6" radius of the wheel staying away from the shoulder. I wasn't able to split it using a chisel and it's as stuck as before.

The method would probably work with some massaging of the cut to fit the chisel taper.

Lizard928

Don't you have an EDM machine to be able to "cut through just the bearing?

Bilal928S4

Maybe now heat and use the puller, as the race is weakened?