Installed Wheel Bearings

These went in pretty easily a lot faster then getting the old ones out. I laid the bearings flush and gave it a whack with a rubber malled.  

Bearing 1

Bearing 2
Side note: I noticed I didn't have the bearing in far enough after
I took this picture. Make sure your bearing is pressed in far enough.


Don't forget the spacer between the bearings 

Rear Wheel Bearings

WARNING! 

DO NOT SANDBLAST & POWDER COAT YOUR WHEEL WITH THE BEARINGS  INSTALLED

Now that I got that warning out of the way. let me show you some pictures of what happens when you don't listen to my warning. 

I spent a good couple hours trying to bang out these bearings and  I had to finally call in a friend (Thanks Bill) to help me hit it a bit harder. 

This is the bearing still stuck in the wheel. 

If you look closely you can see my stuck punch    

This is what my bearing looked like after I got it out

Here are the two little bastards 

that gave me so much crap

A picture of Bill trying to figure out why they put  plastic/rubber  pieces  on the end of the  bearing spacer. 

Here is the piece i was referring to,  I kinda chipped the right side of  the spacer. I'm not sure if the other side had the rubber plastic caps. I'm going to figure that out today. 

The wheel is ready to be cleaned 

and prepped for the new bearings.

Oh yea, this is a picture of my punch that was stuck in the bearing. I now know why I couldn't pull out the punch. I'm pretty sure it was straight when I put it in there. 

Reassembling Front Wheel

Well I got the front wheel reassembled, I think i need to do some fine tuning on the bearing pressure.

I had to go to Auto Zone and buy a cheap wrench to grind down to make my
own tool to tighten the set nut on the wheel.  This is a much cheaper alternative to
buying a special wrench.

Cleaned my front wheel bearings and races

Well I finally got back to the front wheel. I cleaned out the bearing races with a q-tip and some carburetor and below is a picture of my bearings soaking is some carburetor cleaner in my blaster cap (one more use for blaster http://www.pbblaster.com/).  

Bearings Soaking In Carburetor Cleaner

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Removing Front Wheel Bearings

Last night I removed the brake assembly and the bearings, it was a bit tough. I'm going to clean them today and go pick up some new grease to pack them with. Thanx to my wife i didn't loose any bearings.

It looks like i might need a special tool to get the rear wheel bearings out. I'll do some research today and hopefully get those out tonight.

Failed attempt at installing new bearings

Well i'm using the freeze and heat method.
Here is my crank getting nice and cold

Here are my bearings cooking.
I don't think I got them hot enough
I had them in the oven for 10 mins at 200 including preheating. so really they were only in there for around 8 mins at 200 degrees

This is as far as i got :(
not really a success

So i went out and bought a bearing puller and a clutch puller while i was out.
I found out from the moped army that there is a way to press the bearings on with the puller so that is what i'm going to try next time. I think i'm going to take a break from these bearings and try my hand at the wheel bearings :).

Rear Wheel

I decided to take the wheels off the frame today. I'm hoping i can get these cleaned up nicely.

The E50 Engine

Well the engine is out and ready to be disassemble and cleaned. Most of the parts will be replaced with upgraded parts. Let the ordering begin.

What I'm starting with.

After taking off the seat, busted controls and wiring this is what i'm starting with. Not much to look at right now but I can see the diamond in the rough.