Knuckle rebuild questions/observations

[agent orange]

Well, its been a long day but ive made some pretty good progress so far. I started early this afternoon and finished up tonight with one side cleaned and prepped ready to install in the morning. I had a few snags and slowdowns figuring out what tool works and how s*** goes together, but it should fly by tommorow. I made a couple deviations from my plans because of some of those snags, and i thought id run them by you guys and see if you agree/disagree.

1. After my tie rod would not succumb to a puller combined with many whacks with a hammer, i decided to not pull it off and screw trying to check the knuckle bearing preload. As i read the FSM, its not really necessary to do unless youre changing the knuckle or such. Plus, since the shims set the preload, if im replacing the bearing with the same thing it left the factory with it should be fine. Plus, its such a low speed bearing that as long as i take the slack out of it i dont think i could really hurt it/burn it up. Whats you guys' take?

2. I tried to separate the birf from the inner with the vise/hammer technique but couldnt get it to separate, so i ended up just working all the nasty oil laden grease out until it was pretty much clean, and then filling the voids with a grease gun and working it into the inner recesses. When i turn the birf with some angle to it grease wells up out of the cut outs for the balls so i figure i got it pretty well packed in there. Sound like that would be sufficient? I figure i just need to use a bigger hammer, but it makes me a little nervous to really whack the living s*** out of it.

And for a little useful tech contribution, i couldnt find a socket or anything the right size for driving in the races for the wheel bearings, so i just ground down the old race and used it to drive in the new ones. Probably an idea thats been mentioned before, but if i had thought of that in the first place it would have saved me a lot of rummaging around the shop.

Any comments would be great, i just wanted to vent a little bit, im friggin tired.

Matt

 

[lovetoski]

I did both my front axles the same way you described.

Specifically:
Re #1 - I had read posts that if shims are re-installed the same way they are removed, preload will almost always end up w/in factory spec.

Re #2 - I'm sure that separating the birf is a cinch, once you see how to do it. I couldn't figure out how to do it on my own, so I just got it really clean like you did. I used a rubber spatula to help force grease way into the bottom of the bell.

Congrats!

 

[Mace]

1 As a general rule you will be fine. But some of the races are taller than others. making it possible to have the wrong preload on your knuckles. move the steering back and forthand if it feels smooth and not overly difficult, you shoud be fine.

2. You are also probably fine. My method of seperating the birf is to put a piece of cardboard on the ground, put the bitrf/inner on that piece of cardboard, step on the inner and hit the edge of the bell with a BFH. Works great. I did a writeup on it not too long ago..

 

[Mr. Toad]

1. . . . As i read the FSM, its not really necessary to do unless youre changing the knuckle or such. Plus, since the shims set the preload, if im replacing the bearing with the same thing it left the factory with it should be fine. Plus, its such a low speed bearing that as long as i take the slack out of it i dont think i could really hurt it/burn it up. Whats you guys' take?

As Mace said, you're probably OK. You're in preload range if it turns like it did before and you have no death wobble.

But I don't read the FSM to suggest skipping the pre-load check where doing it is possible. It's the knuckle alignment -- with the SST and all that shimming nonsense -- rather than the pre-load check that's optional on a re-build.

Good luck.