Axle ball housing problem (1 Viewer)

[jvincig01]

I am rebuilding my front axle and ran into a snag yesterday. This is the first time I have ever gone completely through it, and I found some easter eggs hidden by the PO. First, one of the spindles didn't have a bushing. Second, no gaskets were used, just Permatex. All stuff I can navigate, though.

Here's my issue, the PO passenger side birfield came out with no issues.. BUT the driver's side did not. The birfield was caught between the endpoints of the ball housing. I had everything lined up perfectly for removal, but my guess is the PO used a dead blow hammer to force it through years ago. I ended up using a small enough pry bar from the top of the ball to force it out.

I measured the openings on both sides, and the trouble side was indeed smaller than the other.

My question is, is it ok to grind this down a hair? This will give me the proper clearance to gently guide the birfield back into the axle upon assembly.

 

[SipLife]

Yeah, perfectly fine to grind down a bit, lots of folks do this when doing an fj60 front disk brake swap into an fj40 axle. Have done so on my own rig. If you don't want to grind, I think @cruisermatt has a set of late 40-disk brake birfs for sale in the classifieds right now.

 

[jvincig01]

Yeah, perfectly fine to grind down a bit, lots of folks do this when doing an fj60 front disk brake swap into an fj40 axle. Have done so on my own rig. If you don't want to grind, I think @cruisermatt has a set of late 40-disk brake birfs for sale in the classifieds right now.

Dumb question but are late 40 birfs different than what I have now? Is there a way I can determine what mine are?

 

[pb4ugo]

Go to FAQ's and scroll down to frt ends and read the 1st two threads or more. You'll learn knuckles and long and short birfs. Short ones are slightly bigger.

 

[Living in the Past]

The earlier 9/75-1/79 Birfield has a longer spline section requiring different free wheeling hubs. The 1/79 on I show being interchangeable with the 60 series. These may have a larger ball on the Birfield. If you do not have a 9/75-1/79 you will be searching for hubs that work. This is especially true if you running hubs made in Japan.

 

[peesalot]

In respect to your issue, yes the earlier fj40 birfs fit thru that ball, the mini truck & later model birfs do not. It requires minor grinding on the inside of the flats/ears of the ball. In fact in your photo it appears the PO had done some on the bottom just finish the job.

 

[SipLife]

Dumb question but are late 40 birfs different than what I have now? Is there a way I can determine what mine are?

79’ and later birfs are same size as fj60. 76-78 are slightly smaller. Carefully grind it down with a die grinder, you don’t need to take off much material.

 

[jvincig01]

The earlier 9/75-1/79 Birfield has a longer spline section requiring different free wheeling hubs. The 1/79 on I show being interchangeable with the 60 series. These may have a larger ball on the Birfield. If you do not have a 9/75-1/79 you will be searching for hubs that work. This is especially true if you running hubs made in Japan.

The PO had Warn hubs. Interestingly enough, when I went to disassemble, their was no retainer ring. There was a bolt and washer type thing that was at the end. I think this is because the birfield did not extend beyond the hub to place the retaining ring on.

 

[pb4ugo]

It is probably the later short birf, and early style long style lockouts. It explains why it was difficult to remove the birf. You'll need to open up the ball

 

[peesalot]

Early birfs were short and the "Long birf" was only a few years.

 

[pb4ugo]

Thank you, I was speaking of disc brake fine spline birfs in my past post.

 

[Shark56]

I used a worn down 4 inch flap sander disk to on my angle grinder ro grind mine down. It was probably wore down to about 3 inches and worked like a champ in just a couple minutes.