Carrier Bearing Replacement
From Faq
The carrier bearing, aka pillow block, on my trail spare drive shaft was in bad shape so I replaced it. Before I could remove the nut with an impact driver, I needed to immobilize the shaft. The manual shows an SST with pins to grab the flange and hold it securely. Not having that SST I tried to chuck it up in my vice. The manual warns not to clamp it so tightly that the shaft is deformed, and thereby ruined. My first couple of attempts didn't hold the shaft securely so I placed some rubber between the jaws of the vice and the drive shaft. This held well enough to remove the nut. Once the nut was off I wasn't able to pull the flange off with my bare hands so I used a puller. I was able to turn the puller with my bare hand, however, so it couldn't have been on there all -that- tight.
CAUTION: Before removing the flange, make sure you have indexing marks on the shaft and the flange so you can get the flange back in exactly the same orientation. If you don't, the assembled shaft may be out of balance. The shop that built this shaft used yellow paint for the index marks, which you can just see at the top of the flange. Here is the order the pieces come off the shaft...
You'll notice that the carrier bearing is put on reversed from the above pictures. I'm pretty sure I double checked the manual but it was getting late... Either the last shop to work on this drive shaft or I made a mistake. I'll triple check the manual tonight...
I used a dead blow mallet to get the flange on far enough that the nut could get a good start...
...then chucked up the yoke on the opposite end of the shaft in a vice. The instructions call for an initial torque of 134 ft/lbs followed by backing the nut off and retorquing to 51 ft/lbs. Clamping the tube of the shaft, even with the rubber pads, was not going to hold anything close to 134 ft/lbs. If I were to do it again I would just clamp on the yoke in the first place in order to get the nut off.
Once you get it torqued, don't forget to stake your nut! (I'm sorry, you can't say that enough that it doesn't sound kinky!) Using a BFH and a punch, drive the flange on the nut down into the key way cut in the threaded section of the shaft. You can also see the indexing mark, at the bottom right of the flange, a little better in this pic...
Original write-up text and pics by Robert Cannon and posted at http://128.83.80.200/taco/cb.html
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