Center Support Bearing Broke

Hello Neighborhood,

I really need some helpful advice.
My center supper bearing is completely broke, after I took off the ujoint and nut, everything came off of the center support bearing including the ball bearings which fell out.

All that is remaining is center of the ball bearing housing, and nothing else. Anyone have any ideas how to remove this?

Thanks for any ideas

 

Hard to tell from that pic but if there's enough shoulder to grab, I would suggest putting drive shaft in vise if you have one and use a puller !
If you don't have one, some auto parts like Autozone will loan you one !

 

Thanks, I’ll try that out this morning if there’s enough to grab on to. On the positive side, I found out what the noise was under the truck every time I stopped at a light. Thanks again!

 

If you don't already have one, you should be able to get a puller as a loaner from the auto parts store. Measure the distance from the shaft end to the edge of the bearing before you go, because if they don't have a generic puller like @BubbaW linked to, you may be able to make another type work, like a power steering pulley, or a front end service kit.

 

I tapped mine off with a chisel. Just be careful and don't hit the splines.

 

Good information! I got it off by using a flathead screw driver and hammer and hitting it for over four hours this morning. Thanks again for the advice, much appreciated!

 

That’s what’s up, that’s my kind of style. I tried to get a puller but there wasn’t enough room to grab it, so I used a screw driver and a hammer. It worked and luckily I didn’t do any damage. Good advice.. thanks a ton!

 

Looks like you may have marred-up the shaft. You may want to carefully/lightly take down the high spots with a small, fine file.

In hindsight, this would have been a good application for a bearing puller.

 

If you did scratch the seal surface on the shaft, there is a magical product called speedi sleeves that will fix it easily. These saved my butt a couple times over the years.

If i'ts just the shaft under the bearing, it's irrelevant so no worries. You can beat that to hell with no problems. Its just that critical 1/8th of an inch where the seal rides that has to be perfect.

 

Everything worked out fine in hindsight and luckily I didn’t scratch or beat up anything that is important to functionality. I’m not too worried about the appearance of the shaft under the bearing and maybe that little spot you see is from my flathead splintering everywhere and the old bearing mess, though it all cleaned up well, but nothing that could impair the mobility of the drive shaft itself. Thanks again

 

I just bent that collar back into shape without a problem. Where I did mess up is when I hammered the hell out of the yoke like an insomniac and the soft metal bent in to a point that i couldn’t get the ujoint cap in, so I put a socket in the hole and beat the side of the socket with a hammer until it became a perfect circle. Then the ujoint cap was able to insert and thankfully the clip went in securely, but I’m absolutely positive I put a hairline fracture on the yoke.