You'll believe a man can fly

This story is in two parts. The first is for all the people that like me making a fool of myself, the second is for the tiny minority who are actually interested in working on cars.

At the weekend I changed the rear wheel bearings on my sports car and it involved the most ridiculous and painful pratfall. The hub nuts are done up tight, and one of them was slightly seized. I had a friend pressing the brake peddle while I was pulling on a breaker bar. I was straining as hard as I could, lifting with my legs, the tyre was starting to rise up off the ground and the breaker bar had a considerable bend in it. The hub nut gave up not with a creak or a sigh, but with a loud and sudden crack. I couldn’t help but to launch myself out of the garage and half way down the driveway. I landed heavily and painfully on the bar that I was still holding.

One of the bearings was easy to change. The other was not. The hub is on splines on the driveshaft. Behind the hub, the bearings are slipped over the driveshaft, the bearings are pressing into a strong carrier which is bolted to the rear suspension. I pulled the hub off the shaft with my little hub puller (it looks like a child's toy compared with what I had to use on a Renaultsport Clio) but the bearings and their carrier was stuck on the drive shaft. I didn’t panic at this point, I made a thing out of my hub puller and some long coach bolts thinking that it would pull the bearings and the carrier off the drive shaft. I was wrong. I had made a bearing puller, I pulled the bearing out of the carrier and left it on the drive shaft. It was at this point that I was nearly in tears because the car was up on stands, the bearing was destroyed and there was no was of putting the wheel back on, it seemed like I’d never be able to move the car again, or put my motorbike away, or close the garage door. My garage is narrow, but I was just able to get the drive shaft out and take it to the bench (dripping hypoid oil everywhere). With a blowtorch and a coldchisel I managed to get the inner race of the bearing off the drive shaft. Again it went with a bang and the hot bearing landed in the box of timber offcuts, but it didn’t quite set the whole garage on fire.

Richard "Jesus nut" B

Glossary
Breaker bar - long handle
Hub - the bit that the wheel bolts on to
Splines - grooves
Bearing - spinny thing
Inner race - the middle of the spinny thing
Driveshaft - the bit that turns the hub
Coach bolts - long screws
hypoid - thick, smelly
Coldchisel - chisel for metalwork