Drum brakes

[ricko1966]

I ve installed plenty of bearings and transmission gears with heat and sometimes a freezer.Not neccesary in your situation.As for messed up threads a fantastic investment is a thread chaser kit from sears it has most common internal and external but the really cool part is two thread files one sae one metric.I case you haven't seen or used a thread file you really should check one out.8 different thread pitches per file and you can clean up right or left hand threads you wouldn't believe the parts I 've rescued with these

[V3ST]

I ve installed plenty of bearings and transmission gears with heat and sometimes a freezer.Not neccesary in your situation.As for messed up threads a fantastic investment is a thread chaser kit from sears it has most common internal and external but the really cool part is two thread files one sae one metric.I case you haven't seen or used a thread file you really should check one out.8 different thread pitches per file and you can clean up right or left hand threads you wouldn't believe the parts I 've rescued with these

Ok, that sounds very encouraging. I've got some very fine files here I think may work, I just haven't had time to try them out. Thanks for everyone's input.

[harpon]

Just took a grinding wheel bit on an electric drill to one of the inner bearing seats on a new brake drum- the bit is wide and flat- fits the recess almost perfectly-

so I guess it's about 36mm like the home made bearing press above-

so tight in fact that it kept stopping and turning in the drill chuck-

but all at once that stopped- the bearing race goes in now easily another 2-3 mm with maybe 4 to go-

I think this will work, and probably not something I could overdo easily- but once it turned without stopping it didn't take much grind to see results with the race- if the bearing race is just really snug instead of really driven or pressed in- I personally have little doubts that it would be a problem.

the smaller outer side may be more difficult because I don't have a grinding bit quite as close to the recess size

[harpon]

As of now I've got the bearing races both into one of the new drums- by using the grinding bits-As it turned out the other bit diameter was also extremely close to the diameter of the recess- just not as square and exacting, so along with the drill, I used a metal file to keep the filing square. When the races got to within about two mm from being able to push in with my fingers, I stopped and cleaned and lubricated the surface and the bearing races drove in then fairly easily with a hammer and a spark plug socket that made two pretty good points of contact at least on one side. Total time was about 20 minutes fiddling with the drill and filing, and I'm confident the bearing races are tight enough otherwise. The other one tomorrow- got the drums for $22 a piece delivered on ebay, so not bad.

Have to wonder why they don't just make the recesses more that size to begin with, but I guess when all else fails we can laden the horses with heavy and expensive specialty tools and make them labor more for Nurse Ratched and Uriah Heep.