Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Rear main pressed out / wheel bearings cleaned

Pressing out the rear main wasn't a big deal.  The hydraulic press at Tiger Tom's made short work of it.

I took this photo to remind me the orientation of the oil holes in relation to the pump housing plate.



Its off in the mail to Stewart Engineering to be swapped out for a 20 thou under bearing.

In the mean time I began tinkering around with other things.  The seat could go back on, nothing holding that process up, so I put that on.  The odometer was really stiff turning, so I cleaned the right-angle gearbox for that.  It still turns stiffly, and I'm not happy about it.  I also couldn't figure out how to disassemble the speedometer.  I know its sticking, because I used a stub of the old speedo cable in the drill to turn it.  It stuck at 20mph.  Its going to need cleaned out.  Work for another day.



The next thing is to tear into the wheel bearings.  The rear came apart easily, and the grease looked good in there.  There was no ingress of dirt, so I cleaned it up and re-packed it.

The front wheel bearing on the otherhand did NOT want to budge.  It took three days soaking in PBlaster before it would even move.  I kept striking it with a tool I had made to back it out.  The left-handed thread was a bit awkward, but finally it started to move.  I was glad the rear moved easily, because I didn't realize it was left-handed.  I was surprised that once it started moving it came out rather easily.  I found those bearings to be in good shape as well.  Cleaned the old grease out and put new grease in.

I proceeded to clean the wheels.  The front is in nice shape.  The paint is good and there is very little rust.  The rear on the other hand looks like it was used excessively for braking, because the paint looked overheated and there isn't much left.  What to do, what to do...  I hate to paint it, but its just bear rusted metal on the brake drum.

I drained some of the old gas out of the tank into the lawnmower.  It burned just fine.  Next will be to clean out the gas tank really well.  The one petcock (newer one) leaks a little, the original one, doesn't leak at all.

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