Another rear wheel bearing question: Driving out bearings

[DRP67207]

Hello all.

I am in the midst of redoing the rear wheel bearings on my '87 Syncro and am a bit confused on the procedure for driving the bearings out of the housings. The Bently clearly states that you should remove the inner race of the outer bearing and the spacer sleeve, and then drift out the outer bearing and then press out the inner bearing. Problem is, there is no way the spacer sleeve is going to make it out by the rollers of the outer bearing, leaving you with no access to the outer race of the outer bearing to drive it out.

So my question is, will driving out the inner bearing by using a drift to push against the inner bearing's inner race (the only part you really have access to with the spacer sleeve still in place) damage the bearing? I've seen this method in a few "how to's", but most of those are replacing the bearings, so damage is irrelevant. I have elsewhere seen people discuss disassembling and regreasing the bearings, so there must be a way to do it without causing damage to the bearings. This is what I hope to do, as I believe my bearings are still okay, no excessive noise or slop, the grease is just cooked and needs replacing. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[dobryan]

I do not believe that the rear bearings can be removed without damaging them but I may be wrong. I know that I regrease the rear bearings by removing the outer bearing seal and use a grease needle deep inbetween the roller bearings to insert new grease and push out the old. Replace with new seal. YMMV.
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'87 Westy w/ 2010 Subaru EJ25 (Vanaru) and Peloquin TBD

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[the joker]

bearing ,spacers should be replaced with new, so do what you need to do to get them out.

just use a brass drift

[Sodo]

Sounds like you are in the same boat as I was. Quiet OEM bearings and the desire to keep it that way.

See this thread: Needle grease rear wheel bearings?

When you insert the needle to the center, and then pump grease in at 12:00, 3, 6, 9:00 you will be surprised how completely the old grease is pushed out. I wish I had a pic of the dirty grease coming out, followed by clean grease. I wouldn’t disturb quiet bearings. Just exchange as much grease as you can, and replace if they start to grumble. Which will be MUCH farther down the road since you’v Pushed out a lot of the metal dust & etc. Order your new seals now.
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'90 Westy EJ25, NEW oil rings (!) 2Peloquins, 3knobs, SyncroShop pressure-oiled pinion-bearing & GT mainshaft, filtered, cooled gearbox.
'87 Tintop w 47k 53k, '12 SmallCar EJ25, cooled filtered original gearbox
....KTMs, GasGas, SPOT mtb

[DRP67207]

Thanks for the replies, and Sodo, I may well end up just trying to regrease without disassembly. However, that thread that you linked was one of the ones I was referring to where there is lots of discussion among Terry Kay and others of disassembling the bearings, inspecting them, and regreasing and reassembling the original bushings. How are folks doing this, just tapping the inner bearing out gently with a drift on the inner race?

[Weezyissuperfast]

Near the end of this page (6) there is some good info on removing the bearings without damage:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...;start=100

Also, really amazing thread in general if you’ve never seen it.

In general I would try to press them with a socket or similar rather than a drift if you can, especially if you can only access the inner race.

[Sodo]

You wrote tapping. The bearing does not move that easily. This pair or bearings appx 2.5 inches apart, supports a short stub axle for one wheel of a ~6000 lb GVWR vehicle. It goes in tight, and if it doesn’t, your rear bearing housings are toast and your bearings wont last anyway. The outboard bearing is a roller bearing. Inboard bearing is a ball bearing which controls the shaft end-play.

Your taps will advance to hammer blows which cause the inner race of the ball bearing to roll up a ramp on both ends. Note that it cannot impart any force to move the outer race until the balls stop rolling up their ramps. The forces are much higher than the hammer blows. This not only destroys the bearing by denting the ramps, it “expands” the outer race, increasing the drive force required (bigger blows). And what if you damage your bearing housing? ($375). All this to say, don’t drive a ball bearing out by hammering an inner race to roll some balls up a couple ramps to move an outer race. Even with old bearings to be discarded, you don’t WANT your bearing housing to be ‘loose’ enough that you succeed.

This situation is metaphorically similar to a discussion with TK. It won’t end with the best possible solution.

Others have written that new wheel bearings are lesser quality thas the OEM. While this “is possible” I have doubts. More likely there was some assembly error with the new bearings. But anything is possible. IMHO if some feller were to change grease at 30,000 miles, then again every 100,000 (and renew seals) they would last “forever”. But nobody would do that. I added grease (needle) around 140k, then “changed most of the grease” at 175k, and fingers crossed for another 100k.

Sorry I can’t help on getting hammer blows to that outer race, I didn’t do it, maybe someone can describe a method? Try asking 61Scout or DJKeev. Surely lots have done it but I doubt they re-used the bearings. I sure wouldn’t hammer across bearing balls and then expect the benefits of new grease to overcome additional bearing damage.

I noticed VanWes above wrote “I did hammer them out without damage.” I guess it’s possible but not an accepted method. He didn’t describe how he checked for damage. That dudes pretty hardcore, he gets into it! There are lots of unacceptable methods that lots of folks drive for many miles. But we don’t have his odometer readings on this one issue....

Anyway you’re trying to do the best job and thats to fully clean and repack. And if you can get that bearing out by drifting the outer race, that’s what you want to know. That’s good Samba information. I’d help if I had a bearing housing in hand.
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'90 Westy EJ25, NEW oil rings (!) 2Peloquins, 3knobs, SyncroShop pressure-oiled pinion-bearing & GT mainshaft, filtered, cooled gearbox.
'87 Tintop w 47k 53k, '12 SmallCar EJ25, cooled filtered original gearbox
....KTMs, GasGas, SPOT mtb

[Wildthings]

In my opinion replacing the outer rear wheel seals is a necessary part of doing a rear brake job. This of course means removing the rear hub which many see as extra work (but not I), but it also allows you to regrease the bearings using a needle on a periodic basis. If you do the inner seals at whatever intervals the transmission is out for rebuild then you should be covered for many many miles in most climate zones and uses. If driving mainly in really dusty area such as the Sonoran Desert or doing deep stream crossing then more frequent seal changes may be necessary and the idea of having a way to purge old grease from the bearings become more applicable.

[Abscate]

[DRP67207]

Thank you all for your thoughts on this topic that has certainly be discussed a lot on here.

So I ended up deciding to go ahead and try to disassemble the bearing assemblies and see if it would damage the bearings. I started with the inner bearings, as those are the ones you can put pressure on. With a shop press, I pressed on the space sleeve, and was happy to see that the inner bearings started moving as soon as a fair bit of pressure was put on them. I feel confident that the pressure needed was not sufficient to damage the bearing. Once the inners were out, it was simple to flip the housing over and press out the outers with a pipe that fit the outer race.

I am going to add grease fittings to the housing and reassemble with fresh grease and seals. I will try to report back with how this pans out, but hopefully they will be nice and quite for long enough that I will forget to update this thread.

Thanks to all on the samba who are make this such a trove of information about these vehicles.

[Sodo]

I planned for years to add zerk fittings to my rear hubs, but theres that pesky detail of filling the cavity so entirely, that the seals which will be “pressure-activated.” Thus if the hubs warm, the grease expands, the seals press overly hard onto the axle seal lands and wear faster. But how warm do hubs get? Probably not much. And you can force the seals out by pumping grease which would be bad. These are the devils in the details, and could amount to nothing. The mere fact that you have clean lubricant is such a big step forward, that this is mostly just campfire talk....

87vanwes added a plug to the opposite side so he could pump grease thru and out the other side. https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7985469#7985469

If’n I had never tried the needle grease insertion method, I believe I would use ‘87vanwes method (the 2holer). I agree that fittings seem like the more elegant solution. Whereas needle greaser is like “the hack”. But seeing it in action where the center injection (at 3:00, 6:00, 9:00, 12:00) so completely forces out the old grease, I’m sold on the method. Sorry I don’t have pics of the ejected grease. The old grease being black & runny, it was plain to see that almost all the grease was replaced by the new.

Pics or it didn’t happen right? I thought I took some but couldn’t remember and couldn’t find any. Sorry. Well anyway thats my needle sales pitch for TheSamba
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'90 Westy EJ25, NEW oil rings (!) 2Peloquins, 3knobs, SyncroShop pressure-oiled pinion-bearing & GT mainshaft, filtered, cooled gearbox.
'87 Tintop w 47k 53k, '12 SmallCar EJ25, cooled filtered original gearbox
....KTMs, GasGas, SPOT mtb

[Abscate]

I can put a upper limit on that hub temperature question

You get a pressure increase of about 15% running a tire hard in summer, so the absolute temperature thus goes up about the same, from about 25c to say 75C. I doubt the expandivity of grease is if enough to cause much trouble with that rise
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[Wildthings]

You can buy grease fittings without a check ball in them that can be used to bleed off pressure and excess grease from a bearing housing.

[Abscate]

Don't forget to preload those bearings too, with preloaded wheel bearing grease
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[AZ Landshaper]

Don't forget to preload those bearings too, with preloaded wheel bearing grease.

What does this mean? Preload the bearings with grease? This isnt a reference to torque correct? Im assuming you mean fill the inners of the bearings w grease before installing.
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[markswagen]

Removing the rear inner bearing { the ball bearing } remove the big snap ring, it should push out easily enough, push on the spacer, and the outer bearing inner ring.
Now you can get inside to push out the outer bearing, with the bearings out, I have a cylinder bore measuring tool {can't remember it's proper name} to be sure everything is round, at this point I drill and tap for a zero fitting, then I clean it all out, grease, swarf from drilling and tapping for the zerc.
I measure the thickness of the spacer, if it's within spec, I've NEVER seen one that wasn't.
Then it can all go back together.

Regreasing, pump the grease in until you can see it coming though the roller bearing, put the hub on it, spin it a time or two, pump in a little more, and call it.
I've never had an issue with this procedure, I've done 30 or more sets now, all good.
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[Jake de Villiers]