Since I've sold my J-body it seems that I'm getting more and more calls about parts & work that needs to be done on friends & others cars. Well today I ran into something that made me laugh, a buddy of mine's wife has a 96 Cav. for the last few months her wheel bearing has been going bad, well today her husband decided to try and remove it.
Needless to say, by the time I got down there it was almost all out, except the wheel bearing was still in the knuckle assembly, even though he removed the retaining torx bolts. The thing is her halfshaft is actually stuck in the wheel bearing, now i've run into some stupid problems before but this one is just horrible. I watched him try everything, he tried hitting the end of the halfshaft to jar it loose from the wheel bearing-didn't work, he triend using a 3 jaw puller to pull the bearing assembly off, well i helped him with that, we broke a 5 ton pulled & 3 wrenches, the 7 ton pulled we couldn't budge without breaking wrenches. I'm just curious if anyone else ever had a problem like this.
Tomorrow I think i'm just goind to drag the plasma cutter or acetylene torch down and cut the half shaft to @!#$ and save the knuckle, just so he can stop calling me and finish the stupid job.
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Try this:
Bolt the torx bolts back down. Get a punch that fits inside the dimple on the end of the axle and beat on it until the axle comes loose. I've broken many bearings (and kept driving on them) and have never had one sieze up on the axle before though.
A punch would work, but I watched him swing a 15lbs. sledge into the end of the shaft needless to say-nothing.
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