home made tools and equipment...

Here's a tool that I made to get diff carrier bearings off without damage. Dana, Salisbury and many other diffs have shims between the taper roller bearings and the diff body to set the bearing preload and the pinion engagement depth/backlash when rebuilding a rear end.
These shim packs are rarely the correct thickness on the first build up, so the it's necessary to be able to remove and replace the bearings without boogering the bearing's delicate cage whilst getting them off. There simply isn't room to get a conventional bearing puller in there on any diff I've worked on. I made the tool at the bottom of the photo in my lathe. They're just offcuts of fairly chunky mild steel flat bar; the bottom lip is about 3/32" thick.



Here it is in use. In order to keep the bars square and the the lips properly engaged with the bearing's inner, the nuts on the studding are fully tightened so that the round spacers are tight against the bars. I have a number of different thickness spacers to fit between the two flat bars so that the tool always contacts the inner race rather than the bearing cage on the different size bearings that there are on various diffs. Even when there's that (tight fit) grunting noise as the bearing starts to move when pressing them off, there has never been any damage to the bearings so far using this tool.

In this picture, you can also see the medallion type piece in the first photo; it's located in the shaft hole in the diff to make it easy to get a straight push off the press mandrel.

 

How good is a small Harbor freight lathe? I would love to have something to make a bushing or a threaded weld in bung and stuff like that. I need 2 spring bushings right now for 2 odd size leaf springs. I've got several and if I had a lathe I could cut some of the larger ones down to fit. It would just be used on projects and I sure can't afford a nice one.

 

Looks like they are a grand, probably pick a better used one up for that or a little more.

 

A nifty trick the guy that owns my go to transmission/rear end shop taught me was to get a spare set of bearings and hone the inner bearing surface so it goes on and off the carrier easily. Use those to set up shims for preload and then press on the bearings you are using for final assembly. Assuming you are using good quality bearings the dimensions are all identical and your measurements will transfer to the new bearings and give you correct preload. Did this when I set up my QC, worked great.
Not that your tool isn't pretty slick as well !

 

Added a buffing wheel to my belt grinder.

 

There are only a couple of companies in China making the small lathes. The ones you get from Harbor Freight are made by the same people who make the ones sold on Ebay. You can find them on Ebay for about $400. Just remember, they are cheap so you won't get accurate products from it out of the box. If you don't need close tolerances, you can use them for hobby projects. Don't expect to make heavy cuts off of steel, softer materials should be ok.
Sometimes they are better than nothing........and sometimes not.

 

Lots of good ideas here. Stueee, I intend to copy your idea. I have a commercial one like you show and like the looks of yours a lot better. Camsore, looks like a very nice belt grinder. Mike, if you want something to do light work with you might look for an atlas or craftsman for less than your harbor freight price. A south bend 9' will likely be a little more.

 

Found my little south bend on Craigslist. I had to mess with just a little to get it going. It also came with a WHOLE bunch of tooling for a few hundred bucks. Maybe you can keep an eye out too. It took a few months for the right one to come along but I was ready. I had gone and looked at plenty to hone my wants out of the tool.

My budy came over to check it out, gave me a crash course on the thing and it's been earning it's keep ever since. Does all the things you talk about and more.

 

I picked up a lot on the process.
Set ups, capability, basics on accuracy, making simple parts, but not cutters. Nothing on the theory of how to get them to do what I want.

 

True, I just didn't know in advance how much force I would be putting on the threads. Longer bolt would have helped to but they are hard to find fully threaded . But it works like a dream. I would suggest locating the bolts off the threaded holes because you can distort them. I had to chase mine out. -Phil

 

Phil,

I think I understand what you're sayin'. If you're gonna make the puller anyway, how 'bout makin another similar plate that you could bolt onto the holes in the housing (a couple of bolts would be sufficient) and let your puller bolts push against this other ring? It would take a much larger hole in the center to allow the bearing and race to come out but would eliminate any possibility of damaging the housing threads.

 

Good idea!

 

I use silly putty to push out pilot bushings. Stuff in hole, use appropriate size rod to pound with, out comes the bushing. Never fails.

 

Great idea!! and a lot easier to clean up than grease. A big round of frosty beverages in your honor

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/7xz0wd/custommade_chain_wrench/

 

that's cool as hell. i need to build one. hell everybory needs to build one.

 

This isn't really a home made tool, more a home modified tool, but I think it still fits.
I picked up this awesome rivet setter at an estate sale.
I cleaned it up a but, and modified it to accept the hole punching dies from a Roper Whitney punch. It's much easier to line up the punch with it set up like this. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

 

I have an old beat up pair of Vice Grips thrown in the grinder drawer, already adjusted, to take off that stupid grinder wheel nut shown at the start of the video.

 

Wanted to straighten the windshield opening on the '33 last week; dug out my old "pusher" made out of a piece of 1" alloy threaded rod and a piece of 1" pipe, adjusted the length with a piece of 3/4" pipe, and made a couple "shoes" to fit the corners and had the "diamond" out in no time.

Anyway the rod and pipe make a handy pusher in lieu of a porta power; plus you can make custom ends easily.

And a custom movement indicator in the middle of the ws opening.

 

here is a buffer stand i built about twenty years ago, i just got around to putting a switch on it today and a dust guard for the motor. i was just plugging it in when i wanted to use it.

 

33 & 1/3 post of his buffer reminded me the buffer we built a while needs a switch too; maybe have to bug the retired electrician neighbor. Snapped a pic when I was over to the kid's house today.

 

Here is a one off set of plastic dies made for my bead roller. They were used for this one job only and probably will never be used again. I need threshold plates for my 54 chevy and I was not happy with the ones I bought as they touched the bottom of the doors and made it hard to close the doors.

 

My purchased used Craftsman drill press came with no mechanism to facilitate the adjustment of table height. No service parts available from Sears necessitated another solution. Trailer jack was a simple and effective fix.
Also shown is a quick and dirty early Ford transmission stand. Ron

 

I made this 2x72 inch belt grinder. Mainly to make blades but I've already used it to finish off a cut bolt and I rounded a piece of flat stock for a bracket...... It'll get used

 

Nice. I think I’m going to have to make a belt sander too, I can’t find a Wilton for a price I want to pay.

So, I’m working on fixing and changing some stuff on a recreation of the Edsel Ford speedster. I needed to remake the front lower grill which has grill bars that start curved on the bottom, and as they move up the grill flatten out, then gently curve the opposite direction.
Our slip roll has some grooves on the side of one of the rollers and would have worked for this, but creates too much waste on each end of the bars.



So, I made a simple little bender for the job. I cut a couple strips of 1/2” thick steel and drilled and countersunk then to bolt in place of the jaws on a vice. I then welded some nuts to that and bolted on some spare bearings with some fender washers to help keep the rod in place. Now I have an easily adjustable bender, and I can remove them from the vice and stick them in a drawer when not in use.

Here are some photos of it, and the grill I’m making using it.










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WOW Great tip and a great grill!

 

Nice job on the bender! mine was much more crude.....but it worked.

 

Cretin,
Can you share any pictures of the Speedster?

 

Thanks!

Thank you.
Yea, benders like yours work great as well. We have one like that too, comes in handy.
I wanted to be able to fine tune this one a bit more since some of the bends are so subtle.

Sure, I’ve got it all torn apart at the moment, but I’ve got a couple photos from when it first came to us.







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Cretin,
Thanks! Imagine if Edsel could have talked Henry into selling those!
Looks good.