Before the work. The red behind the tire is a jackstand under the frame. I never work on just a hydraulic jack support. Seals do blow and the results are instantaneous and usually expensive even without personal injury.
Rube goldberg - Yes. But it saves me raising/lowering the wheels to break the lugnuts loose.
When I need a little more friction to hold the tire. from spinning.
Spira Gauge. Not too accurate but I set them with the pointer directly at the axle hub when the pressure is correct. Makes it much easier to visually quick check for pressure loss.
OK. Lugnuts are off now. Ready to pull wheel.
Flatbar give good leveral to gently lift the tire to work it off the studs.
Slight bend at flat makes a nice rocker fulcrum that works vertically as well as horizontally. Comes in very handy when putting stuff back together.
7K torqflex axles. Ready to prep for pulling hub.
Rubber dead-blow hammer and unique crowbar.
The crowbar tip is tapered just right.
Double tapered. good crowbar
Better view. Tips are sharp enough to get behind grease cap rim.
These caps have no real lip edge so a simple screwdriver does not get enough of a grip to pry it up. Notice the crowbar tip is rocked back against the edge of the hub so it presses outward against what little lip there is on the cap.
This is the critical part. Get the tapered tips of the crowbar against the angled edge of the cap. Not against the inserted cylinder surface as that will only dent it.
Sharply strike the crowbar. The double tapered tips will drive slightly outward against the lip of the cap. Might take a few whacks to find the right impact force to get it moving. Rotate the hub some between whacks even if it does not seem like it moved at all.
These caps are very heavy and fit far too tight to just pull them off with big channel locks. Just keep working around the edge to worry the cap off. Before each whack, be sure tips are against the back edge of the lip and not against the cylinder of the cap.
Straighten and pull the cotter pin. Always good to have a few extras of these pins around before starting cause they can become non-reusable.
Loosen the hub nut just a little bit but leave it on for support in the next few steps.
Thought you saw this before? yep. This time we put the wheel back on - but....
Put it on - backwards. This makes it easy to use a 3 jaw gear puller to ease the hub off the spindle without whanging the heck out of the inner bearing and seal.
Put 3 or 4 lugnuts back on but just finger snug.
remove the spindle nut.
Remove the spindle nut and washerbefore putting on the gear puller.
large 3 jaw gear puller. Setup to fit the wheel holes best.
Fits almost perfectly when dividing 12 by 3.
Just work it off the spindle but go gently. There will be some tight spots
Keep going. its coming off slowly.
Note the foot on the flat bar lever to gently support the tire/hub as it comes off. This also lets you jiggle it a little bit when it hangs up
Note the foot on the flat bar. This both lifts the assembly and swivels side to side on the pivot point where the bar is slightly bent. Way easier than trying to manhandle just the hub with no control and very little leverage.
This give good solid control of the whole assembly while working it all off the spindle.
catch the outer bearing. Note it took all the threads on the puller to get it all the way off. Wheel/hub is still supported by flat bar lever under foot.
There we go. Eased it off without hurting anything.. including myself.
Putting the new magnet clip in is one of the harder things to do without a little preparation, first.
This was to support the actuator arm when pushing the new brake magnet retaining clip back onto the actuator arm to hold the magnet in place before working on the actuator and pivot lubing.
There. Now the clip goes on straight and clean.
Removing the nut from the actuator arm pivot.
and removing the top outer spring so the actuator arm can be removed to lube the pivot and other contact points. A real spring hook would be alot safer and easier way to do this than the pliers. Better leverage and control, particularly when reattaching the spring.
Pull the actuator arm off the pivot. Might have to work at it a bit.
Lube the pivot and contact points only with the proper grease and not too much.
Ok. So now to lubing the inner bearings.
The proper way to do this is to remove each seal and the inner bearing cage and race. But these double lip seals are about $50 each so I am trying this method for a few cycles and plan spot checks throughout the year as well as watching rolling hub temps.
The trick is to force grease from the inside, up into the cage while pulling the bearing cage gently against the seal .. and rotating the whole cage during the packing.
Do it with a lot of grease and a lot of rotation and it seems to get enough new grease in and force a lot of the old grease out of the bearing cage. I periodically wipe the discolored grease off and scrape it out of the hub core with my fingers and then add more new grease.. Don't take shortcuts here. The idea is to dilute the old grease as much as possible in this process.
Brake is lubed. Note lube on sliding surfaces to either side, too. Wipe excess that might run when hot. Just a slight contact lube is what is needed. Also, violently work the brake mechanisms to their limits during and after lubing to be sure of getting lube to all contacts and forcing any excess to the surface for removal before putting the hub back on.
Again with the flat bar lever to help lift and control the whole tire/hub assembly back on the axle without whanging and banging the seals and bearings.
Dexter says to tighten spindle nut to 50 ft lbs (hand wrench tight) while rotating the hub (much easier with the tire still on it) and then stop. back off nut and then finger tighten without moving the wheel at all. Finally, back off spindle nut to first cotter pin drop it will go into. way Less than 1/8 turn for sure.
