The car is a 2002 BM@ 325Ci.
So I've been getting more and more annoyed with the wup wup wup noise coming from my rear end. The other day I jacked up the rear of the car, disabled the DSC, and ran it up to about 25 mph. I could clearly hear noise coming from the left-rear bearing even unloaded. The dealership was nice enough to have changed the rr bearing before I bought it.
So today I start to disassemble the rear. It's a 10 year old MN car with 160,000 miles so I was expecting some difficulty, but I've never had problems like this.
I'm trying to remove the half-shaft out of the splined flange. It's almost exactly like most FWD cars. The other end is disconnected from the diff, the bolt is off the axle, so there is nothing left holding the splined shaft in the flange other than rust.
Skipping ahead a bit, I've got an 8" 3-jaw puller on the flange with the bolt pressing the axle in. I fully expected it to work.
What's happened so far is that I've snapped the bolt off the puller after applying all my weight on about 30" of extensions. Now the puller is stuck on the hub with all that tension. I tried bashing the sheet out of the bolt with a 4# hammer, hoping the combination of tension from the puller would work with the hammer blows to move the shaft. No luck.
Even swinging with a 20# sledge on what's left of my puller, I'm not doing anything more than starting to bend the puller's center bolt.
I can probably get the puller off if I hammer off one of the legs. Hopefully it won't fly up and kill me. I'm leaving it set up overnight, hoping that maybe a few tons of force and penetrating oil might do something.
Otherwise, I'm not sure what I can do. I can put back together and pay someone else to deal with it. I could try to keep the alignment by marking the bolts and undoing the whole darned hub and finding a press.
Anyone have any thoughts?
I haven't gotten to the bearing yet.
So I've been getting more and more annoyed with the wup wup wup noise coming from my rear end. The other day I jacked up the rear of the car, disabled the DSC, and ran it up to about 25 mph. I could clearly hear noise coming from the left-rear bearing even unloaded. The dealership was nice enough to have changed the rr bearing before I bought it.
So today I start to disassemble the rear. It's a 10 year old MN car with 160,000 miles so I was expecting some difficulty, but I've never had problems like this.
I'm trying to remove the half-shaft out of the splined flange. It's almost exactly like most FWD cars. The other end is disconnected from the diff, the bolt is off the axle, so there is nothing left holding the splined shaft in the flange other than rust.
Skipping ahead a bit, I've got an 8" 3-jaw puller on the flange with the bolt pressing the axle in. I fully expected it to work.
What's happened so far is that I've snapped the bolt off the puller after applying all my weight on about 30" of extensions. Now the puller is stuck on the hub with all that tension. I tried bashing the sheet out of the bolt with a 4# hammer, hoping the combination of tension from the puller would work with the hammer blows to move the shaft. No luck.
Even swinging with a 20# sledge on what's left of my puller, I'm not doing anything more than starting to bend the puller's center bolt.
I can probably get the puller off if I hammer off one of the legs. Hopefully it won't fly up and kill me. I'm leaving it set up overnight, hoping that maybe a few tons of force and penetrating oil might do something.
Otherwise, I'm not sure what I can do. I can put back together and pay someone else to deal with it. I could try to keep the alignment by marking the bolts and undoing the whole darned hub and finding a press.
Anyone have any thoughts?
I haven't gotten to the bearing yet.
