Hi guys
Hope the collective brain trust can either scold me or offer some sage advice here ::)
In the process of changing out the flex disks and thought this would be a good opportunity to also change out the carrier bearing setup as well as the centering busings at the flanges.
Holy cow what a nightmare :o The service manual says to drill a hole in the bushing and then work them out with a mandrell and levers, but this pretty much ended in tears for me. They are in there extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY tight, so I ended up destroying the bushing completely and with some very colourful language at least got the front one out, but man it was murder >:(
Any tips before I either say f ' it and leave the back one, or once again mangle the thing during a 3 hour ordeal?
Cheers
Heh, I remember this nightmare on my 6.9. I don't recall any easy way of doing it either.
Though I don't own any 116's anymore its a similarly nightmarish proposition to undertake on later models too. Personally if the original centering sleeve is in good condition my advice is to leave it well enough alone. Probably just clean it and apply a "good quality synthetic grease" as kent burgsma would say.
It might not be much help, but you see see where I did this in post #189. https://forum.w116.org/test-drive/my-custom-1980-300sd-project-part-2/180/ (https://forum.w116.org/test-drive/my-custom-1980-300sd-project-part-2/180/) After a while, it seems the bushing will start to slide out. It's not easy.
Thanks guys yup this is one of the more "fun" times I've had with the 6.9...
In 25 years I've never seen one of these go bad or even have any wear. Consequently, I've never replaced one.....and given the difficulty you now know why. haha
I've never seen a worn rear one, but I have seen several worn or damaged front ones. The wear/damage is usually the result of driving with a damaged flex disc.
I remove them by welding a piece of angle iron across the end of the bushing, such that the angle iron can be supported in a hydraulic press, then I have a mandrel that straddles the angle iron/bushing, and presses on the flange at the end of the prop. Its then fairly easy to use the press to pull it out, but when you see how much force it takes with a press, you realise why the traditional method is so difficult.
Yup I thought I was going to stroke out on this bloody thing :o
Rear one looks fine, as did the front one for that matter. Hard lesson learnt ::)
Cheers
Those bloody things, lol.
Having done one of the ones on my 6.9 (only because one of the lips that hold the grease in was damaged, and not alone I might add). I would not attempt to do another unless it was really stuffed.
Even the one on my W109 which has a shredded flex disc is still OK.
Tim
Haha- part me being stubborn might lead me to do the back one. I am trying to think of a better method, but what makes it really challenging is:
- large surface area making large contact with the mounting surface
- pretty thick steel, I would say at 2mm thick, so tearing it out in strips is not easy.
I used a Dremel to cut slots and then a punch to drive strips down into itself and then to slowly work it out but it was nasty :o
While I was doing it I imagined some long dead German engineer laughing his ass off somewhere at this little malady they created...