924Board.org

[sequential]

[gohim]

The coating of rust indicates that the bearings ran out of grease long ago.

What happens when the grease fails and rust occurs, is the inner race of the bearings rust weld to the wheel axle. The only safest way to remove the axle at that point is use a large two or three arm gear puller. If that does not work, you need to apply heat at the same time you are using the gear puller. And if that does not work, you would need to remove the trailing arms from the car, and put them into a hydraulic press, support the bearing block, and to force the wheel axles out.

Beating on the wheel axle with a hammer after it's support (transmission) was removed is a waste of time, since all you will be doing is deflecting the trailing arms and the trailing arm bushings. It also puts severe strain on the trailing arms that may cause them to bend, or the trailing arm bushings to crack/crush/mush out. You need to get the car into an alignment shop to see if you bent the trailing arms (replacement of the trailing arms and/or bushings will be the only sure for this mistake).

Once you have started any of the more severe wheel axle removal methods, YOU MUST complete the removal of the wheel axles, and REPLACE THE BEARINGS. The reason is that applying force the way you have will probably have damaged/distorted the bearings races, and the bearings are going to fail shortly anyway. The howling noise very well could be a sign that the wheel bearings were already damaged before you ever tried to remove them.

I didn't read anywhere that you inspected, and repacked the cv axles with grease in this thread. The howling noise could also have been coming from dry cv axles. While you are in there and everything is apart, you should go ahead and inspect and rebuild or replace, and repack the cv joints.

[billmay34]

As always thanks for all of the great and helpful advice. I have been wrenching on cars for a long time now and I have never seen such a stubborn disassembly. (Well perhaps the removal of a crank pulley from my old ’61 bug after the pulley welds failed in the Mojave Desert…).

Anyway I did smack the hell out of the spindle with a 5lb hammer, but I don’t think the various supportive structures were tweaked at all. The 2 x 4 received some serious damage however.

Just to rule out the CV joints and their lube levels - these were properly lubed when we had them apart for the clutch plate and trowout bearing renewal earlier this past summer. By the way working on these cars is so much more pleasant in the summer; here in the very cold (28 degree) garage with cramped space is not the most fun to have! While I’m at it the cold beer that goes along with working on the rig is much tastier in 80 degree weather too!

Back to the task, sounds like we need to take this to the next level. To pull the spline out with a puller would mean to pull from the center of the car, meaning to place the puller on the CV joint side of the mount. It looks like the attaching surface which the CV joint connects to is sturdy enough to attach a puller… Yet I think I need to push the spline, out applying force from the wheel side and then push it toward the tranny. Am I correct on this?

Just to mention here the spline as it sits spins without any sense of binding and is spinning true with no lateral or in and out sloppiness. I am going to pull it out of the garage and take a spin with the digital camcorder so that I can post a clip with sound on Utube so that you can hear and see the sound.

If I understand the diagram for this assembly the circlip is used to hold the inner bearing in position, I don’t see where this is in any way holding the spline in the mounting. Can anyone confirm?[/url]
_________________
Bill May
Seattle, WA
1991 MB 300E - 202,000 Miles
1977 Porsche 924 Martini - 85,000 Miles, Purple.

[Smoothie]

[Ozzie]

Circlip only holds the inner bearing in.
_________________
Porsche 924 1984 (UK import) NA
Its AUTO and its BLACK
Montego Black on black/red
Engineer of Electro/Mechanical Systems Maintenance

[gohim]

No, you don't attach the puller to the inside.

You operate the puller from the outside.

From the outside of the car, hook the legs/claws of the gear puller to the backside/inner side of the bearing block on the trailing arm. Put the wheel nut partially on the axle, and use it as a guide while you are using the center screw of the puller to press on the end of the axle and push it out the backside.

As I wrote before, beating on the axles has already caused some damage to the bearings, in addition to the accellerated wear/damage from rust, and running without adequate lubrication. You may not be able to detect this damage with a visual inspection, or by spinning the axle by hand without loading it. At this point the bearings MUST BE replaced. The spacers may be damaged as well, and you should plan on replacing them as well.

[Lizard]

[billmay34]

More information on the saga of the wheel howl….

I have placed a couple of YouTube videos for anyone to see. I also went to a local machine shop to discuss the options. They were familiar with the issue of removing the axel and they were not able to suggest a solution except the “heat it up and pound it out” option.

I am reluctant to heat this up in the car as the location is so close to the fuel tank so I am going to use some penetrating fluid and will attempt to pound it out after the penetrating fluid has some time to soak in.

We are interested in any of your thoughts as to the source of the howling noise. As you will see in the YouTube videos this car has some other sounds that make driving fun. These include the loud exhaust system and a possible torque tube bearing noise.

Give a look/listen and if you have any ideas thanks in advance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT9-l7lMh7c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg1uZ0GgT48
_________________
Bill May
Seattle, WA
1991 MB 300E - 202,000 Miles
1977 Porsche 924 Martini - 85,000 Miles, Purple.

[gohim]

If the spacers were simply still dimensionally correct, and simply rusty, they could have been cleaned up, refinished (powdercoated?), and reused.

But after getting hammered on hard enough to trash a 2 X 4, I am sure that have been distorted. Especially by the time they get pressed out.

The wheel bearings and the spacers from the trailing arms I have salvaged, and the ones on my own 924s that I have serviced all came out without any extreme measures when it was time to service them, and they were all within new spec. and reusable.

[Ozzie]

When I done mine (they may have just needed repacking but replaced anyway) the spline shaft came out with little effort.
A quick smack with the hammer on the 4x2 and they nearly flew out.
The grease was old and black but no rust.
Replaced the seals and bearings, repacked with grease and reassembled.
Made sure the nut was friggin tight, repacked the CV's and replaced the CV bolts with allen head bolts.

Made a world of difference to the rear end noise.
_________________
Porsche 924 1984 (UK import) NA
Its AUTO and its BLACK
Montego Black on black/red
Engineer of Electro/Mechanical Systems Maintenance

[rusto]

If you remove the hub from the car you'll be able to use more heat and force. Screw a couple of hub nuts back on to protect the threads a bit.

[billmay34]

We finally got back to the project after some severe weather and time to think.
I recalled all the past experiences with pulling stubborn parts apart and remembered that i did have a puller for the job!

getting the jaws to seat was a bit of a trick, but once they bit it worked out like a champ!

We are cleaning the parts and ordering the inside seal for reassembly. All of the surfaces look good, we will post our photos later today.

thanks to everyone for the advise and input.

_________________
Bill May
Seattle, WA
1991 MB 300E - 202,000 Miles
1977 Porsche 924 Martini - 85,000 Miles, Purple.

[billmay34]

We were successful with the R&R of the axle and bearings the pictures are posted at the url below. After reassembly the howl was much reduced and yet still there. It is now on the rear left only. This is good. We are ordering the bearings for the left side and will R&R those in the near future.

The ongoing tranny noise is still there however. Hope vs hope was that he bearing would somehow manage the wheel noise too. In the interest of moving forward we exchanged the tranny gear oil and the shifting is much improved. Yet the sound still continues.

Deciding to move the inspection forward in the car I opened the inspection cap on the forward end of the tranny and suddenly there was a rush of materials from this space! Carefully inspecting the material we identified it to be a mouse den! There was at least a full liter of materials and two very dead mice!

Once cleaned out with we inspected the front bearing for the transmission. Is there any value in applying lubrication to this via the inspection hole? Is there a preferred lube to use?

Has anyone here been successful with addressing bearing noise in the torque tube? I am suspecting that the noise is indeed from the bearings within the tube and if any of you have any suggestions I would welcome the discussion. We have a second TT available to rebuild off line and I suspect this would be the best thing to do to eliminate the noise we are experiencing.

BTW we have already replaced the clutch throw out bearing and eliminated some noise as a result.

Thanks to all!

pics of process and of the mice!
http://s144.photobucket.com/albums/r177/billmay34/Wheel%20Howl/
_________________
Bill May
Seattle, WA
1991 MB 300E - 202,000 Miles
1977 Porsche 924 Martini - 85,000 Miles, Purple.

[Rasta Monsta]

[billmay34]

Any chance you have worked on the torque tube? any advice?
_________________
Bill May
Seattle, WA
1991 MB 300E - 202,000 Miles
1977 Porsche 924 Martini - 85,000 Miles, Purple.