hahmule
Husqvarna
A Class
I recently undertook the replacement of the steering head bearings and races on my 06 TE 610 and I thought I would post some commentary since it is typically a time consuming task at least the first time around. The bearings are easy, it's the races that are hard, so that's what I'll focus on in this post.
In the case of the Husky, the challenges are two fold. First, the bearing carrier, the part that holds the race in the steering head, is very beefy and covers most of the bottom surface of the bearing race. There is only about a 3 mm annulus on which to apply a drift at any point along the race. In the first photo, the tool is on the bottom of the race, on the other, it is on the carrier.
The second issue is the steering lock. This protrudes well into the steering head to engage a slot in the steering stem.
This limits where one can apply a drift to the upper race and precluded the use of my Park Tool for removal of the upper race (more on that later). Here’s a pic of some of the stuff were tried and failed.
I didn’t want to take a chance on damaging the bearing carrier so I ordered the Park tool for the job, it is about 30$ door to door. With it, I was able to remove the lower race with about four sharp blows of the hammer. However, when I tried to apply it to the upper race, the steering lock precluded the intended placement on the race. I tried every which way to get it work, but no joy, the tines just skipped right off when I hammered.
Back to square one for the upper race. I cut a slot in the copper pipe you see above to get it to seat around the lock, and for the first time, I moved the race about 1mm, but that’s it. As with the lower race, the drifts, screwdrivers, chisels etc. failed to budge the race any further.
In frustration I took the Dremel to the race hoping I could score a horizontal cut that I could apply a drift to and spin the race in the carrier thereby loosening it, no soap. So I took a trip to Harbor Freight to shop for ideas, what finally worked was this,
a gasket scraper for $ 2.99. What you see in the photo is “worked” version of the tool. I placed the blade in the bench vise length wise with the tool handle parallel to vice jaws, and used a vise grips to bend the blade into a mild three panel fold. From there, I used the peen on the hammer to round it out. It took some doing to shape the tool to match the curvature of the bearing carrier. When I first used the tool, the rubber end piece muted the hammer blows, I was glad when it simply fell off. From there, I inserted the square end of a ½ inch ratchet extension through the bottom of the tool and continued hammering. Here's the tools that worked.
A visual testament to how hard I was hammering.
I was able to get the race about a third of the way off before the tool starting skipping like the others. A close inspection of the tool revealed it had deformed somewhat, but with some reshaping with the peen and the dremel, and she was back in shape and ready to work again. I found I needed to re shape both the curvature of the tool and dress the top edge to keep it working. I repeated this twice more before the top race eventually came out. Victory is mine!
Lessons learned and advice for the next time and for those who follow:
One can do a lot of beating and bashing and get absolutely nowhere.
Protect your left or minor hand, wear gloves from the beginning.
The Dremel is your friend, I used it repeatedly in this task.
It was tool selection and modification that worked, not endless bashing.
The Park Tool was worth it if only for the bottom race. Highly recommended.
Don’t even think about it if you are in a hurry or under a time constraint.
See the above comment about not damaging the bearing carrier, I don’t know how one would fix a badly damaged carrier.
Hammering without a solid purchase on the race is a waste of time.
Instead, invest the time in tool shaping and selection to get that grip that you need, then bash away...productively. If it starts to skip, immediately reshape the tool, this is time well spent.
There is another race removal tool, but they are little pricy for a little used mono tasker, and have a beveled edge, so I wasn’t confident they would work with so little of the race exposed in the first place. I’ll leave that for someone else to try and report on. You can find and example of one of those here.
http://pitposse.com/ststberare.html
Lastly, once you get the races out, consider grinding two grooves in the upper bearing carrier to allow the use of a 1/4 inch drift in the future, but consult someone like George at Uptite before proceeding, particularly as it applies to placement, since the lock precludes placement in the 3 O’ clock position. This thought occurred to me too late, as I had already replaced the races. Ahh well.
I hope you found the post worthwhile, and that it might help some of you who are contemplating the task.
In the case of the Husky, the challenges are two fold. First, the bearing carrier, the part that holds the race in the steering head, is very beefy and covers most of the bottom surface of the bearing race. There is only about a 3 mm annulus on which to apply a drift at any point along the race. In the first photo, the tool is on the bottom of the race, on the other, it is on the carrier.
The second issue is the steering lock. This protrudes well into the steering head to engage a slot in the steering stem.
This limits where one can apply a drift to the upper race and precluded the use of my Park Tool for removal of the upper race (more on that later). Here’s a pic of some of the stuff were tried and failed.
I didn’t want to take a chance on damaging the bearing carrier so I ordered the Park tool for the job, it is about 30$ door to door. With it, I was able to remove the lower race with about four sharp blows of the hammer. However, when I tried to apply it to the upper race, the steering lock precluded the intended placement on the race. I tried every which way to get it work, but no joy, the tines just skipped right off when I hammered.
Back to square one for the upper race. I cut a slot in the copper pipe you see above to get it to seat around the lock, and for the first time, I moved the race about 1mm, but that’s it. As with the lower race, the drifts, screwdrivers, chisels etc. failed to budge the race any further.
In frustration I took the Dremel to the race hoping I could score a horizontal cut that I could apply a drift to and spin the race in the carrier thereby loosening it, no soap. So I took a trip to Harbor Freight to shop for ideas, what finally worked was this,
a gasket scraper for $ 2.99. What you see in the photo is “worked” version of the tool. I placed the blade in the bench vise length wise with the tool handle parallel to vice jaws, and used a vise grips to bend the blade into a mild three panel fold. From there, I used the peen on the hammer to round it out. It took some doing to shape the tool to match the curvature of the bearing carrier. When I first used the tool, the rubber end piece muted the hammer blows, I was glad when it simply fell off. From there, I inserted the square end of a ½ inch ratchet extension through the bottom of the tool and continued hammering. Here's the tools that worked.
A visual testament to how hard I was hammering.
I was able to get the race about a third of the way off before the tool starting skipping like the others. A close inspection of the tool revealed it had deformed somewhat, but with some reshaping with the peen and the dremel, and she was back in shape and ready to work again. I found I needed to re shape both the curvature of the tool and dress the top edge to keep it working. I repeated this twice more before the top race eventually came out. Victory is mine!
Lessons learned and advice for the next time and for those who follow:
One can do a lot of beating and bashing and get absolutely nowhere.
Protect your left or minor hand, wear gloves from the beginning.
The Dremel is your friend, I used it repeatedly in this task.
It was tool selection and modification that worked, not endless bashing.
The Park Tool was worth it if only for the bottom race. Highly recommended.
Don’t even think about it if you are in a hurry or under a time constraint.
See the above comment about not damaging the bearing carrier, I don’t know how one would fix a badly damaged carrier.
Hammering without a solid purchase on the race is a waste of time.
Instead, invest the time in tool shaping and selection to get that grip that you need, then bash away...productively. If it starts to skip, immediately reshape the tool, this is time well spent.
There is another race removal tool, but they are little pricy for a little used mono tasker, and have a beveled edge, so I wasn’t confident they would work with so little of the race exposed in the first place. I’ll leave that for someone else to try and report on. You can find and example of one of those here.
http://pitposse.com/ststberare.html
Lastly, once you get the races out, consider grinding two grooves in the upper bearing carrier to allow the use of a 1/4 inch drift in the future, but consult someone like George at Uptite before proceeding, particularly as it applies to placement, since the lock precludes placement in the 3 O’ clock position. This thought occurred to me too late, as I had already replaced the races. Ahh well.
I hope you found the post worthwhile, and that it might help some of you who are contemplating the task.
