Final Drive Bearing Race Removal

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Tjgerow
420 crawler
420 crawler
Posts: 48
Joined: Wed Oct 14, 2020 9:27 pm
Location: Central Virginia

Final Drive Bearing Race Removal

Post by Tjgerow » Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:32 pm

I replaced all the bearings in the final drive of my JD350C and thought I'd provide a few details for anyone that may need to do the same. This is only one of many techniques and it worked for me. Your experience may have different results.

The process was pretty simple once you get past using a welder on the finals.

The bearing races where all pitted and had small cracks in them.
Image

I had some friends that have worked on heavy equipment before tell me that you can weld the races and when they cool they will shrink and fall out. I happen to have a very cheap mig welder and decided to give it a try. I cleaned all the oil off the finals and covered the metal areas in anti-splatter. I also stuffed wet rags into the housing to help keep any weld splatter from sticking to surfaces I didn't want it on.

So here I am running a bead of weld around the middle of one of the races. I did the same thing to all the races in each final.
Image

Once the race cooled it practically fell out of the housing.
Image

To put new races in I used dry ice to cool the races and shrink them enough to drop in. I put dry ice into the bottom of a small foam cooler. Then I placed the bearing races in the cooler and filled with enough anti-freeze to cover all the bearing races. I let everything sit overnight.

The next day I used a MAP gas (yellow can) to heat the final drive housing and checked the temp with a thermal gun (harbor freight). Once I got the final above 200F I pulled the bearing race from the cooler and dropped into the hole in the final drive. I gave a few gentle taps with a punch and hammer to make sure it was fully seated. I then kept pressure on it until all the frost disappeared from the race. One all the frost was gone it was locked in place.

The dry ice method worked very well. You just have to move quickly and make sure you start the race in as straight as you can. Keep a punch and hammer close by in case the race doesn't drop all the way in. I had maybe 30 seconds of time from when I stopped putting heat to the final to having the race set in place and the frost gone.

Hope this info helps someone in case they need to remove some bearing races, or put new ones in.

-Tom
1978 350CE Dozer, 6-way blade

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LeonardL
350 crawler
350 crawler
Posts: 869
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 7:11 pm
Location: Missouri

Re: Final Drive Bearing Race Removal

Post by LeonardL » Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:06 am

Great illustration on bearing race removal. It's an old method thats been around a long time. Your method for installation is great as well and I'm sure it works great on this application. However I never found these races to be that tight when it came to reinstalling them. I use a simple bearing race driver to reinstall the races. That being said this is a great way to do it if someone is concerned about damaging the race during the install. Thanks for sharing this I'm sure it will help others down the road.
40 plus years working on JD 350s, 400Gs, 450s and other equipment both Ag and Construction.

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