Early 911 rear bearing woes...

rickeolis · 05-27-2003, 01:03 PM

I went to inspect and lube my rear wheel bearings. I started with the passenger side, which took some doing to disassemble, but with patience and a lot of tapping using a long socket to drive out the hub, all worked well.
My problem is putting it all back together. I find that the outer most race (towards the inside of the car) wants to mate perfectly with the hub while sandwiching the hub and carrier shaft of the CV mount stub. This proved impossible for me to do after several attempts. You cannot see the race as it mates to the hub just as they make contact, and it is not supported by anything as it goes in.
It has to be absolutely perfect, which is hampered by the initial contact of the bearing cages that try to lean a bit away from the first point of contact to them as well. (This is a catch-22)
On the last attempt, I ruined the castle nut, and possibly the shaft it screws onto by applying too much force, as the race simply didn't start correctly on the shaft.
I will get a new castle nut, and hopefully the shaft threads can be repaired, it only stripped the first few, but not very deeply. The nut took the brunt of the damage by design.
Even when all is right again, I don't know how to approach the job. It was suggested to take the control arm off and take it to a shop to have the parts pressed together, but that's about 3 hours additional work and more money, but I may not have a choice. Another suggestion was to freeze the shaft, and heat the race before trying; this MIGHT work (and I MIGHT win the lottery too.)
Any suggestions?

Neilk · 05-27-2003, 01:17 PM

I didn't know that rear bearings ever needed servicing. I thought the bearing's lubrication was self contained. If not, I forgot a step when I replaced my rear bearings.

rickeolis · 05-27-2003, 01:29 PM

One thinks that 34 years of hard use would tend to do something to these, but as you just stated, I was wrong. I will NOT be doing this to the other side! Everything does indeed appear as though it was brand new in there.

I still need a solution though... EarlyS? Walker? Tyson? JimS? HELP!

tronman · 05-27-2003, 01:36 PM

I did the rear bearings on my 69 912 awhile ago(69 912 uses the same bearings as the 911) when it came to reassembling everything I kepr the bearing itself and the hub in the freezer over night, the next morning used a small amount of heat(propane torch)on the control arm and the ice cold bearing will slide right in...if you use light heat on the inner race of the bearing(don't want it getting too hot as it will damage the seals and burn the grease) and the hub will glide right in also, the stub axle was no problem at all it just slid right in place. Might be worth a try as I've heard removing the control arm requires pulling the engine on a 911...

rickeolis · 05-27-2003, 03:01 PM

I should have mentioned that my engine is out.
Thanks, I was hoping that someone who has done this successfully would chime in. The heat\freeze method looks fine on paper, but... After you said it worked for you, I will try it!

Superman · 05-27-2003, 03:24 PM

All this talk about rear bearings is confusing me. Recently, there were pictures of a 930 rear bearing that looked like a large version of a front bearing. Odd, I thought. I am not used to seeing those kinds of bearings on drive axles, and am still wondering how it works.

Anyway, my experience with drive axles is limited to only one kind of bearing, and that is the more expensive, cylinder-shaped one-piece (actually there are many pieces including two inner races) sealed (even though they come apart) bearing. With these, when you remove the axles, you simply press the old bearing out, and toss it along with the inner race that may be stuck to your axle. Removing them also destroys them. Then you press the new bearing in (yes, heat and freezing helps a great deal), put it all back together and torque it as tightly as you physically can using a six foot cheater bar.

That's WAY WAY more torque than those ricer engines produce. (wink)