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MG MGA - UJ removal

I am stuck! The UJ bearing only comes this far, before the other bearings hit on the yoke. I cannot grab the protruding bearing with vise grips and pull it out as it is too tight. HELP! Yes, I did remove the grease nipple.
I am doing the prop shaft, not the steering joint. I have done these before on other cars (long ago mind) and not had this problem.



Art Pearse

Hi Art.. You should be able to Pull the cap ( take care not to lose any roller bearings ) with a pair of mole grips /Soft jawed vice etc .. then tap the central post with a brass/soft metal drifft this should push out the other cap ...

getting them out is easier than putting the little B... stools in ..

be warned that the New UJ are a little larger/ longer than the old ones and you may be forced to round off the ends of the caps to make the holding Clips fit..

ken

k klay

Sorry forgot to mention... if you are going to replace the UJ's you may want to add some heat ( this will destroy the rubber seals ) if you are still having trouble removing the end caps..

You can use a Gas/butane tourch, this should get enough heat into the cap to help remove it ..
ken
k klay

Take a look at John Twist's 5 minute u-joint replacement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDX17xf9grA

At 3 minutes into the video you can see how he removes the bearing cap.
Chuck Schaefer

Art, not long ago I had the drive shaft out of the car, and found one of the UJ to be just fractionally loose. I tried to remove it to have it replaced, but was unsuccessful. As it wasn't that bad I decided to leave it be. I wll have to replace it the next time round. If you have a look a John Twist's video on Youtube, as Chuck suggested, it seems to be a very straight forward operation. I will most certainly follow the video when I do mine. Good luck.

Frank
F Camilleri

Chuck, nice video from John Twist. His way, there is no possibility of crushing the yoke.
I managed to get the stuck cap out by grinding 2 flats on the exposed face and using an open wrench to rotate it free. Then the opposite race would not go back in straight, nor would it come free, so I had to grind a bit off its edge to get it to come out from "inside" On the other yoke, the end came off one of the bearing caps.
Ken - I measured the old spider + caps at 2.475" across the ends - are you saying the new ones are bigger? And what source are we talking about - Moss?
Art Pearse

Hi Art, mine came from the MGOC..

I found that the UJ's were just a tad larger and this made putting them in almost impossible ...( bust two sets of UJ's ) I have done many UJ's on jeeps, i'm no novice to UJ's ..

I had to grind/ file asound the edge of the bearing cap to get the end clip in ..
I would not recomend the maintanance free UJ's..

ken

k klay

Ken, it is possible that in removing the old bearings, the yoke can get crushed a bit, especially if they are tight and you are pressing from the far side. John Twist's method prevents this.
I am hoping to get proper sized replacement joints (Hardy Spicer)
Art Pearse

Hi Art, I used the hammer menthol as well but one of my UJ was a real barstool to remove so used heat to get it out ..

The internal measurements of the yoke was the same across all the yokes...even took the prop and ujs to the MGOC and they had a look at them as well ...we looked at some B and midgets props as well , they all have the same UJ codes.. The new IJs were about 1.5mm longer..

I used a black and Decker power hand file to ROUND off the bearing cup edges..
You may be lucky and not need to shorten the UJs ..lets hope ..

Again i would not use the maintenance free UJs ...

k klay

This thread was discussed between 31/07/2010 and 02/08/2010

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