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Removing cam bearings?

anthrax323

NAXJA Forum User
Location
San Antonio, TX
I'm 99% done with the teardown of my 2001 4.0, and picked up a Lisle 18000 cam bearing installation/removal tool to do the cam bearings. Starting with the rearmost bearing, I'm already running into issues.

I have the appropriately sized expanding driver, and tightened it in the bearing... only to have it shave the bearing a bit without actually budging it even slightly.

To make sure I understand correctly: the expanding driver needs to expand into the bearing itself, right? The only other thing I can imagine would be expanding it into the race, but that would risk galling said race so that doesn't make much sense to me.

Given that this is a 240k engine, am I just looking at a seized bearing? I'm about to step out for a bit, so I was going to hit it with a MAPP torch and quench it with PB Blaster and revisit the whole mess in a couple hours.

Any personal experiences/anecdotes/tips are welcome. Thanks in advance.
 
I have never tried R&Ring a set of cam bearings. I have always had the machine shop take care of that.

That said, I don't think it makes sense to have the tool try to expand into the bearing itself. I would think it would go behind the bearing and expand to match the OD of the bearing, or just shy of the OD of the bearing.

I would not call the bores into which the bearings are pressed "races". They are not an especially refined surface. The bearing itself and the cam are what have finely finished surfaces.

If you expand the tool into the bearing itself I would think you are tightening the bearing in its bore.

You can take all the above with a grain of salt (or more) since I haven't actually tried to do that job. Just operating off general experience.
 
Yeah, I agree that expanding it into the bearing doesn't make much sense, but that's all I can deduce from the instructions. Also, the expanding drivers have rounded shoulders, so I'm not sure they'd be able to grab onto the bearing if I expand it into the bore and try to drive the edge of the bearing.

Jeep Driver - I'm having all 3 done, but wanted to do the entire teardown myself first. If I run into many more issues I'll probably just return the tool and have it done by the machine shop.
 
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