Claus Groth

First the story:

If you remember last month's installment of the track car blues, the turbocharger shaft had split and both impellers went their own directions after one lap.

This month, I got two laps in before there was some rear wheel hop, grinding and lack of power. Towed in again! Damage survey back in the pits showed a right side outboard CV joint broken. Good, because I have an extra axle assembly with me. After replaceing that there was still grinding noise so I presumed that I had damaged gears in the transaxle.

Home James . . .

While pulling the axles, I found the left wheel was turning separate from the axle. It turned out that the rear hub had broken. I first thought that a weld broke but actually, this is a forged piece. OK! Break the 1/2" breaker bar with cheater pipe attached. Can't get the nut off. Cut the nut off, remove the stub shaft and drive out the hub. The inner race of the bearing comes out with the hub. I remove the other stub shaft and one from a spare trailing arm and all have the inner bearing race still attached. I pressed them off and had the hubs magnafluxed. They are good so I am now set to reassemble.

Now to my question. I can't get the inner races back into the bearings. I even removed the bearings today and tried to install the inner races into the bearings out of the trailing arm. No luck. The bearings only have 80 hours on them so they are almost new. Has anyone been able to replace the inner races or do I have to purchase new bearings?

Sam Lin

I'd bite the bullet and get new bearings, unbalanced operation like what happened when your hub broke and the point stressing when you pulled the race out likely gave them a beating, and the bearings are cheap items for the labor in them.

Sam

cruise98

I always thought the bearing was destroyed when you removed the hub. I would purchase new ones. When I did mine, they were toast after being removed.

Andrew Wojteczko

I believe that once they split, they are toast, it is possible to remove the stub shafts without the bearing separating sometimes, but not always. Make sure there are no burs on the stub when it goes back in to ensure that the next removal doesn't split the bearing again.

Andrew

Claus Groth

Thanks all, I purchased new bearings and heated the arms enough to remove the old ones. Heated again until the new ones slid in. That did it.

PCinDC

Claus just so you know, www.arnnworx.com makes a tool that allows you to remove the rear wheel bearings without diextroying them. Also very helpful when re-installing, and significantly cheaper than the $250 Porsche charges for the job-specific tool.

F18Rep

Fan... I'm not sure my tool will help this situation. I think what Claus (and others) is saying is what I have seen too, when you yank the hub (ususally with a slide hammer) one of the the inner races pulls out with the hub shaft (seperates from the beaing). When it seperaes, it pulls the plastic/metal seal out of the bearing too. This seal is pretty much mangled in the process and IT is (I believe) what makes the bearing un-usable. I have been able to re-insert the inner race back into the bearing (although they were old not new like Claus') but getting that seal strainght and back in it's groove seems impossible. Even if I could get it all back together it is probably not a good idea to re-use the bearing - they are just too much work to get in/out of the trailing arm to risk.
I've changed about 6 now over the last couple of years and most have been dry.