Somewhat frustrated with my lack of progress so far my better half has decided that this years birthday present can be getting the hub carriers & hubs refurbished by Wards or John Gordon; so to that end I thought I’d better see what needed to be stripped off prior to sending them away.

One part that seems worthwhile to strip off and retain is the spacer tube within the rear hub carriers. In the original Jaguar application this tube is suspended between a pair of tapered roller bearings at either side and there’s a reasonably long winded procedure for setting the preload of said bearings in the Jaguar workshop manual. Not so in the Dax DeDion application – here the hub carriers are rotated 90 degrees from their intended orientation and the tapered roller bearings are replaced with plain steel bushings that will be set in with bearing adhesive or wicking adhesive – so we’ll pull the bearings and retain the spacer and simply instruct the refurbisher not to replace these parts.

Despite my initial trepidation the inner race, bearing and spacer tube tap out easily by placing the hub carrier in a vice and using a ratchet extension as a drift; tapping down from the top causes the lower bearing to drop out complete with it’s inner race and the spacer tube still attached. Flipping the assembly over allows the remaining bearing & race to pop out easily.

Removing the outer races seems like it will be more troublesome as there is no lip to get a drift behind as they are ‘blind’ bearings (the outer race seats up against material such that the race surface is flush with the casting).  If I had a MIG or TIG set I’d simply run a bead of weld around the inner surface of the bearing race and watch it drop out, failing that a blind bearing puller would work.. in the interests of expediency, though, I may just let Wards pull the outer race for me!

Here’s a couple of pictures of the first hub after five minutes with a drift before dinner last night: