How do you seperate the driveshaft spindle from the hub ??

[revhigh]

HI All !

I'm in the process of replacing the driver's side half shaft on my daughter's 2002 Protege LX. I've removed the spindle nut, brake caliper assembly, and seperated the tie rod end and the lower ball joint. I've heard that the driveshaft should be able to be 'tapped free' of the hub by hitting the end of the half shaft, which I've tried. I'm reluctant to hit it too hard for fear of transmitting those blows to the differential. As it is, I've been pulling it away from the differential and tapping it (fairly hard) but I can't do it alone if I want to hit it harder. I have a friend coming over to help me hold it tommorrow.

I just want to know .... should the shaft just 'tap free' toward the inside of the car to seperate it from the hub ? That's what all the tutorials and research that I've read has said should happen.

Once it's free of the hub, do you just pull it out of the differential, and push the new one in, and then button everything back up ?

Thanks for any help.

REV

 

[revhigh]

Nobody ???

REV

 

[revhigh]

Update !!

Well, I tore it apart, removed the spindle nut, caliper assembly, seperated the tie rod ends, seperated the lower ball joint, and pried the half shaft out of the transmission. Supposedly the half shaft's spindle should 'tap right out' of the steering knuckle and hub. Yeah ... right. I took the whole thing to the bench, and literally POUNDED on the end of the spindle with a 10 pound sledge. No movement ... I mean ZERO MOVEMENT. Next .... heavy duty wheel puller ... no movement .... ZERO MOVEMENT. Finally took it to a mechanic who attempted to punch it out with a heavy duty air chisel type gun ... he's never seen one not come apart with that approach ... no movement ... ZERO MOVEMENT. Over to the 25 ton press ... set everything up with super heavy duty truck type press plates ... they started to BEND under the pressure .... but finally it moved ... 1/4 of an inch. After that it was standard pressing and off it came. I have NEVER seen anything withstand so much pressure before. It looks like the splines were rusted to the hub splines, even though they were covered with grease.

Damaged the trans seal when prying the half shaft out of the trans, so had to replace that. Everything went back together in about 20 minutes from that point on.

Problem solved ... no more grinding noise. Just goes to show that a half shaft doesn't have to click around turns to be bad.

REV

 

[shootz]

I swapped out my front knuckles when I upgraded to 5-lug all around and I had a similar problem. My axels were rusted into the knuckle/hub and I used a heavy-duty wheel puller and pounded it with my hammer to get it turning a 1/4 turn at a time... I never thought I'd be sweating so much to do so little. Afterward I filed the rust off the axels, coated them with bearing grease and had no problems re-installing the setup.