[azw]

Here's an update. This job just gets better by the day.

Today I talked to Andy, a certified Toyota mechanic, who said this is often a very difficult job. They usually have two people working together to get the bearing loose...of course they use a lift, so they have a lot more room to manuever. One person pulls with a pry bar while the other jiggles the support with an air hammer. The air hammer is used with a round point simply to vibrate the bearing support. He also highly recommended PB Blaster penetrating oil spray.

Sounds good. But Lady Luck was laughing at me today. I got my dad to come over. We air hammered and pried for about 10-15 minutes, and then the pneumatic tool broke. Alright, next time I'll buy a better one. (This one was on sale for under $10 at Harbor Freight. I'd guess I got twenty minutes out of it total.)

So we went back to pounding in wedges and using the penetrating oil. We had less success with the horizontal pounding technique Allen used. (That may be because we weren't actually moving the race, as I'll explain in a second.) A large cold chisel, then that combined with an old wood chisel, and finally a wood-splitting wedge, which finished it off.

An early sign that things were deteriorating inside the bearing were that the bearing got sloppier with time. Then I saw bearings in odd positions. The big clue finally came when ball bearings starting falling on us.

Eventually the axle came loose, but the race (the outer ring of the bearing) was still in the support and hadn't moved at all!

So, we removed the engine mount. That's easier when the axle is out. First we tried taking the mount and that rubber thing together, but there's no room to maneuver it and there are all kinds of fragile-looking electrical and fuel(?) connections near it that had us worried.

So we reattached the rubber thing and took out just the mount. The top nut (goes into that rubber shock absorber between the frame and the engine mount) is a real bear. I had to pry on an open end wrench with a nail puller. to get that nut loose. I may try a clawfoot socket to reattacth the nut. I think that might allow me access from the top. I'm betting that's the nut that Allen couldn't get. We almost gave up, too.

I thought having the support out of the car would make using a punch to move the race out of the support easy. Nope. It's not budging. So tomorrow I'll have to search for someone who can do that. I'm considering getting a new mount, but I'd bet they're pretty expensive.

By the way, there is very little of the race showing. Using a punch to pound it out would be very difficult even with the support removed from the car. There just isn't enough to give you any bite. I'm pretty sure that doing that while the axle was in place would be impossible.

I'm leery of being overly optimistic, but it does seem like I'm nearly done. I'll believe it when I see it. At least it's been a great exercise program and I've had an excuse to talk with the neighbors.