Hi all!
I'm doing a full rebuild on my '72 front drum axle. I now have fj60 knuckles and "short" birfs in. I had to do some grinding to widen the opening on the ball housing enough to get the larger than stock birfs inside. Everything was perfectly clean and refurbished when assembling.
After doing some grinding, drivers side turned out perfectly, and I thought the passenger was too. Got everything greased up and inserted, put knuckles on a torqued everything down. The P-side birfield was pretty tight going in but I thought nothing of it. At that point, I thought I'd sanity check and take out the birfs just to put them right back in. Found that the drivers would come out great, but the P-side would not come out. (yes, flat sides are up and down). I think as the ball cooled down from grinding, the amount of clearance decreased just enough to not allow the birf to come out again.
A couple of weeks have passed, I got complacent and just assembled things further but I'm getting nervous about my decision to not address it now. I think the plan of action would be to disassemble everything on the passenger side, heat up the ball housing with a torch, slide hammer the birfield out of the housing, do some more grinding and then just put it back in.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Worth it to do it now rather than later? Thanks.
I'm doing a full rebuild on my '72 front drum axle. I now have fj60 knuckles and "short" birfs in. I had to do some grinding to widen the opening on the ball housing enough to get the larger than stock birfs inside. Everything was perfectly clean and refurbished when assembling.
After doing some grinding, drivers side turned out perfectly, and I thought the passenger was too. Got everything greased up and inserted, put knuckles on a torqued everything down. The P-side birfield was pretty tight going in but I thought nothing of it. At that point, I thought I'd sanity check and take out the birfs just to put them right back in. Found that the drivers would come out great, but the P-side would not come out. (yes, flat sides are up and down). I think as the ball cooled down from grinding, the amount of clearance decreased just enough to not allow the birf to come out again.
A couple of weeks have passed, I got complacent and just assembled things further but I'm getting nervous about my decision to not address it now. I think the plan of action would be to disassemble everything on the passenger side, heat up the ball housing with a torch, slide hammer the birfield out of the housing, do some more grinding and then just put it back in.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Worth it to do it now rather than later? Thanks.