Easy way to get a bearing race out of a recess

Another and possibly easier way is to use my internal bearing extractor with slide hammer (assuming I have one that fits the ID of the bearing etc).

But you are right about the heating effect ... I once froze a motorcycle wheel bearing whilst heating the ally wheel with a hot air gun and the bearing just dropped in! It also came out a lot easier when warming the wheel up as well.

I just re-bearinged a couple of trailer hubs and having a 10 tonne hydraulic press and a lathe to turn suitable 'pushing' tools makes that sort of job a breeze as well. ;-)

I've also got a set of external bearing pullers that again, as long as you can get them into place make such jobs very easy (as does having a welder etc).

Cheers, T i m

Mine didn't fit :-(

Yes, I've done that in the past. In this case I was surprised that heating (rather than cooling) the race worked so well - I presume it transferred heat to the housing and then shrank back faster than the housing.

I've often wondered about making a press with an old bottle jack but there's always been another way of solving problems so I haven't needed to do it.

Mine fall off, or the centre bolt wanders around on whatever it' pushing against. I used a Dremel slitting disc to cutter the inner races so I could crack them off the shaft.

It's down to the bearing suppliers tomorrow for the new bearings, then I can continue mowing :-(

That's the thing about interference fits and heat. :-)

Yes, that's a great technique especially on "heat sensitive" hardware.

Going back to the "welding" approach, that will make the bearing lose its temper. Most such metallurgical transformations result in a dimensional change, I don't recall which way it goes for bearing steel ATM but sounds like they must shrink. The heat will also "cook" any sticky degraded oil residues. I've never been quite sure why a gas axe is so effective on things like exhaust pipe clamps. You don't have to melt them off, get the bolts red hot and they usually unscrew easily (even though you might expect any new oxide created to make them tighter).

Could be?

Sure, there are often many way of doing stuff but now I have one, I wouldn't be without it. ;-)

I think they normally have a centre point and the end of the shaft a hole? If they don't I turn up a little adaptor. ;-)

That's another way. ;-)

Good luck. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

I remember being fascinated by the way they put the tyres onto railway wheels.

I pooh-poohed the idea at first, thinking that tyres were always made of rubber and trains don't have rubber tyres!

(I was about 12 at the time.)

Or how they put new tyres onto wooden waggon wheels...

There's also the grease and rag method, as demonstrated here:

About the same age I learned that some of the train is going backward when it is going forward. ;-)

Cheers, T i m