Half shaft issues

hoping someone can help me... on a a recent thread I spoke about how I'd changed my hold shaft bearings and collars whilst doing a front axle rebuild on my series 3 truck. The short (off side) half shaft went straight in but I'm having a devils own job trying to get the longer (and unwieldy) near side half shaft to fully go home. I think I've got it near on occasion as if I gently turn it then I can see its turning the output. I don't want to hit it as I'm not confident about it not damaging anything... getting slightly annoyed now!! Thanks

Gertie36 said:

hoping someone can help me... on a a recent thread I spoke about how I'd changed my hold shaft bearings and collars whilst doing a front axle rebuild on my series 3 truck. The short (off side) half shaft went straight in but I'm having a devils own job trying to get the longer (and unwieldy) near side half shaft to fully go home. I think I've got it near on occasion as if I gently turn it then I can see its turning the output. I don't want to hit it as I'm not confident about it not damaging anything... getting slightly annoyed now!! Thanks

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Had this with mine, on the new collars there is no leading edge think the ones you have bought are after market ones which is what I bought BP collars and bearings so ended up re-using the old ones instead inc new Timken half shaft bearings.

Are you shore with the short half shaft that it went in properly and not pushed the inner race out of the bearing as that is what I found as I thought it went straight in first time as without the leading edge on the collar the collar will just push the inner race out, rebuilt the bearing a couple of time till I decided on re-using the old ones

Plus the Timken bearing is better made as there is a ring on both sides of the bearing to stop the inner race and needle bearings being pushed out where as the BP bearings don't so without a leading edge on the collar and no rings on either side of the bearing your just spending all day removing the half shaft and rebuilding the bearing as all the needle bearings keep being pushed out when the race gets pushed out

So, I've managed to get the long half shaft in, except it's now in so tight I can't pull it out again It all rotates properly but there's no In and out movement, unlike on the short shaft I'm able to push and pull approx 5mm and it's seems quite free . One side obviously isn't right..... front diff seems fine so I really didn't want to split it down (that comes with the rear one) but I'm thinking of taking the diff off to satisfy me that it's all ok in the middle.

Think that's how I found the problem the first shaft felt as though it went in ok but when fitting the other shaft I had the same problem you have so i tried pulling the other shaft out and couldn't after a while I got it out and all the needle bearings had fell inside