Before I get into the bearing grief I ran into today, a question popped up in the What pissed you off today thread. I was bitching about a wheel puller tool I needed. Got lots of ideas and,questions
Q1: how big is the hub and what is the thread pitch?: The front hub is 2 1/8 x 24 tpi. The back is 2.5 x 24. Well it looks the same as the front thread pitch anyway. So, these are fairly big threaded pieces
Q2: how does hub puller work? Here is a pic of the front and rear pullers
The process is to loosen the clamping bolt, thread on the puller, and then tighten the clamping bolt. At that point you can start cranking on the back bolt to bear down on the spindle. Usually you have to crank it down, smack the back of it with a small sledge, crank some more, bfh it again. Repeat until something gives, hopefully the wheel hub and not the tool.
A trick for sticky ones is to back off the spindle nut a turn or two and drive in circles with the wheel on the inside of the turn. Another approach is to jack up the opposite side when using the puller. Both these approaches put an outward load on the wheel to pull it off the spindle. Anyway, that’s what I have read.
Back in my world, it turns out that the 1926-27 Ts have a different design, with inner roller bearings, and threaded outer roller bearings. You have to screw off the outer bearings to remove the wheel. This explains why I was not able to just pull the wheel off. Once I unscrewed the outer bearing, the wheel flopped right off. The rears do need a puller, but I was able to borrow one form a Model T guy who has rebuilt my starter, generator and carb. Nice guy. Model T guys are like gun guys, always willing to help you out!
I addressed the drivers front wheel first because it was dangerously sloppy. The outer roller bearing was bad, and the inner was worse. Total junk. The passenger side was in much better shape. Interestingly, the pax side spindle is LH thread and the drivers side spindle is RH thread. So, different part numbers. All are Timken roller bearings. Here are some pics
And the totally clapped out bearings in close up
I will probably have to order replacement bearings and wait for them to arrive, but I will check around local using the timken part numbers.
Next up today was the fan bearing. It had too much wiggle and too much in/out play.
It’s easy to get off, and simple to replace the worn bearings. Trying to get ahead of the parts availability issue, I had two new bearings ready to press in
But it was not to be. Here is the fan pulley in various stages of disassembly
Here is the front bearing. A split bearing which was a surprise. Looks to be a make-do fix
Here is the rear bearing - Wait! There is no rear bearing!!
Apparently somebody has removed the rear bearing, and cast in a Babbitt replacement. If you look close you can see the joint between the Babbitt and the aluminum hub.
The only reason I can imagine for doing this, is to repair a hub which was so damaged a bearing wouldn’t fit snugly. Although this repair worked, it did not have the thrust bearing part, or the “brim” of the top-hat shaped bearing. So, several red brass shims were added to take up the slop. I will need a new hub. Finally, the felt seal that’s supposed to keep grease in the hub was almost disintegrated. It’s the black squiggly thing in the pic below
So the box score for today is Model T ahead 2-0. Here is what I have now:
A pile of parts
And a model T with no front shoes