Stuck rear axle.

[Ionstorm66]

So I'm in the process of stripping my donor car down. The rear hud/drum are super duper stuck on the axle. Dose the axle have enough inward travel to hammer it into the hub? I feel like I'm going to break the drum if I keep trying to hammer it off. It isn't the pads as I backed the tesnioner off and the drum rotates freely.

[skishop69]

Your best bet is a slide hammer if you have access to one. I believe you can rent them from O'Reillys or Autozone. Another trick is to get a BFH and hit the face of the drum as hard as you can repeatedly. This will 'shock' the drum loose from the axle. Or should... It's almost always what we do in the shop.

Edited February 28, 2021 by skishop69

[1 Lucky Texan]

nvermd

Edited February 28, 2021 by 1 Lucky Texan

[Ionstorm66]

7 minutes ago, skishop69 said:

Your best bet is a slide hammer if you have access to one. I believe you can rent them from O'Reillys or Autozone. Another trick is to get a BFH and hit the face of the drum as hard as you can repeatedly. This will 'shock' the drum loose from the axle. Or should... It's almost always what we do in the shop.

Slide hammer didn't get me anywhere, just wanted to pull the car off the lift. Dose the stub axle pull out or push in? I have the cv axle removed so it should come out of the bearings.

[idosubaru]

Get under there and grab it and thrust it towards the diff and the hub - is there any play?   If it's just a ring of slight corrossion then it might work, but if it's got consistent corrossion that's going to pull across the entire splined area even a little movement isn't going to free the entire thing. 

So you try a little and see what happens.  Here's the issue:

If it's rusty - like if the car is from the north - sometimes they won't budge with smashing with a hammer and you'll compress the threads so much that the axle nut won't thread back on and the end will be mushroomed out enough that it won't pull through the hub.  So yeah you can try bashing it - but don't do it so hard that the end threads start to comrpess and mushroom out. 

You're in florida - rust that bad isn't going to be as common as it is up here, but there are plenty of northern transplants down there as well. 

In these cases a torch is your friend unless you love pounding and getting creative - those are beastly time sucking jobs. 

Edited February 28, 2021 by idosubaru

[Ionstorm66]

20 minutes ago, idosubaru said:

Get under there and grab it and thrust it towards the diff and the hub - is there any play?   If it's just a ring of slight corrossion then it might work, but if it's got consistent corrossion that's going to pull across the entire splined area even a little movement isn't going to free the entire thing. 

So you try a little and see what happens.  Here's the issue:

If it's rusty - like if the car is from the north - sometimes they won't budge with smashing with a hammer and you'll compress the threads so much that the axle nut won't thread back on and the end will be mushroomed out enough that it won't pull through the hub.  So yeah you can try bashing it - but don't do it so hard that the end threads start to comrpess and mushroom out. 

You're in florida - rust that bad isn't going to be as common as it is up here, but there are plenty of northern transplants down there as well. 

In these cases a torch is your friend unless you love pounding and getting creative - those are beastly time sucking jobs. 

Car is from new hampshire. Lucky the under side has about 1/2" of rubber under coat from the PO so no rust there. But everywhere that isn't coated is rusted. Takes ages to free up nuts and bolts. I already almost runied the threads trying to free it up. I'm almost at the point of pulling the trailing arm and pressing it out.

[Ionstorm66]

Managed to get the drum off. I'm thinking best course is to pull the nut off the back of the hub and just try and press the brearings and stub out as one. Then cut the brearings of the stub, and grid down the end so the nut will clear.

[idosubaru]

19 hours ago, Ionstorm66 said:

Car is from new hampshire. Lucky the under side has about 1/2" of rubber under coat from the PO so no rust there. But everywhere that isn't coated is rusted. Takes ages to free up nuts and bolts. I already almost runied the threads trying to free it up. I'm almost at the point of pulling the trailing arm and pressing it out.

Oh that's too bad, that sounds like the time sucking horror job variety.  I've broken 3 jaw pullers and brake rotors trying to push stubs through.  3 jaw puller on the brake rotor and POW - the rotor shatters.  hopefully you get lucky but torch/press/cutting might be needed. 

[silverhelme]

23 hours ago, Ionstorm66 said:

Car is from new hampshire. Lucky the under side has about 1/2" of rubber under coat from the PO so no rust there. But everywhere that isn't coated is rusted. Takes ages to free up nuts and bolts. I already almost runied the threads trying to free it up. I'm almost at the point of pulling the trailing arm and pressing it out.

I had to do just that on my Brat. Mark your stub and axle to reference reassembly then pull the clamp that holds the outer boot them slide it back. There should be a ring that allows you to remove the bearing from the housing. Disassemble  the control arm from the car and slide it off the axle shaft. I still needed to use heat while it was in the press and replace the bearing. As of last spring the bearing and seals were still available.

Edited March 1, 2021 by silverhelme