Fabricated parts of a puller to help my friend remove a stuck bearing

My mini-mill and I have produced more elaborate bits of tooling. This was a piece of cake.

BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

A few months ago, Peter and I put new wheel bearings on Peter's very rare Lancia.

Peter told me the right rear bearing was making a huge racket a few weeks ago. So he investigated, and it was completely shot.

He tried to pull the bearing off but was only partially successful.

Part of the bearing got stuck

This happened last time as well. But I managed to pry it off that time. This time it was more stuck and more difficult to get access to. Peter thought one of his smaller pullers might work, but it needed extending by some 10-15 mm

Could I produce four of these a bit longer?

My mini-mill and I have produced more elaborate bits of tooling, this is a piece of cake. I found a piece of 3 mm-thick galvanised steel.

So I used my angular grinder to quickly cut four rough pieces. Next, I used my mini mill to make them nice and rectangular.

Next, I managed to clamp them all down and drill two sets of holes. Put a 4mm bolt through.

Tidied them up a bit more, looks good

A little bit of polish. All done in under one hour

Peter and I had been discussing how to extract that last bit of bearing from the axle. Peter had driven quite a bit with this broken bearing. The risk is that due to friction, the bearing inner cage gets so hot it more or less welds itself to the axle. So I loaded up the W123 with every possible tool that could help us.

First of all: Stuck bits might need heat! So I put my Acetyle/Propulane set in the car. In such a way that, I would hope, meets with the approval of safety inspector Thad!

Next, a bunch of grinders, electric saws, crowbars, BIG hammers and so forth. And some more wax/polish stuff, as I was going to visit my boat Sirion afterwards.

When I arrived at Peter we always start with a coffee and a chat. Whilst I went ahead and got my tools out, Peter was going to attach the new bits to the puller.

However, I managed to dislodge the remaining part of the bearing with just the pickle fork and my large hammer. We still had to use the puller to get it off the last 5mm as well!

Peter had ordered the new bearing assembly and he called the dealer to check whether it had arrived. Only then did he find out they had ordered the wrong part. This Lancia has ABS, and that means the bearing assembly comes with the ABS sensor input ring (see the previous post linked above). So we could not finish the job!

It will take a few days for the new part to arrive.

We did discuss how this could have happened. A brand new bearing, gone in under three months and a few thousand kilometers. It could have been a quality problem with the bearing. If you have followed this thread you will have seen we have come across quite a number of problems with brand new parts.

Peter said he was surprised at how little force was required to undo the main nut. Which was a surprise. These nuts need to be tightened to 350 Nm! Neither Peter nor I have such a torque wrench.

Peter replaced both rear bearings because the Lancia was about to fail its MOT due to play in the left rear bearing. We, for good measure, replaced both. But we did not have the torque wrench, so Peter agreed with the MOT station that they would redo the MOT and tighten the nut. We suspect they might have only tightened the left one, as that was the bearing that did not pass inspection.

Regardless, we will never know, most likely. But as soon as we have the new bearing, Peter will go back and get both nuts checked/retightened.

Continue reading Jeroen's post about replacing his friend's car's rear wheel bearing for BHPian comments, insights and more information.