YouTube Transcript:
A few years ago we did a video on these on how to put in new bearings in these idlers and tensioners and we kind of knew what we're doing but since then Scott's taking it on himself to become well the world's foremost leading expert on how to get in here and get out of here without any detection it's it's really cool to be able to put this together and never know that somebody was in there so every one of these is bad even if you think they're good once they get rolling at 2000 RPM they make noise or they're going to be bad I mean these bearings weren't designed to they're sealed and the grease is 50 plus years old yeah and heat and time and moisture everything's against you so we have you send things in and we make them like new and Scott is if you think you're a do-it-yourselfer Scott's going to show you how to do it and what to buy so roll it away Scott thank you all right these are the the small and large bearing these are the flat bearings two different sizes these are the 6869 typically use this smaller bearing on the what I call the small bearing pulleys then in 70 they went to a larger bearing larger cap larger shaft the whole thing so they're they don't crisscross you can't get a pulley to put on this one and vice versa we also do the other Style the wide-bearing ones and I do have these new and I can rebuild them too most of them look at the pictures and I do we do have there's two sizes of these from the factory and we do have to cut them so you can tell from the back there's a little bit of a where it breaks into the wherever they use that hole I don't know I think they use it for other applications so yeah these are the style bearings we sell all these they're all on the website we'll put links up probably this is what I what I get start with when I when I rebuild them for our our pulleys for resale or from what you send in I do typically sand blast them to clean them up just to keep my hands clean as I'm doing this but you don't have to do that I'll do that but honestly when they come in when originally the bear the brackets should be natural steel some say phosphate and oil I think that's right pulleys are usually glass or chassis black the Caps are more of a natural but they're really not a natural color we don't get into that now I do have one customer that he does send them in already done but I have to file on the straighten them out just so I can hand fit the cap in the bare the bearing cap afterwards so I do booger it up a little bit but so if it's already restored prior to me getting a hold of it I'll do the best I can but it's going to might be might not come out as perfect as pretty as you left each you sent it to me and thought it was going to work so anyway I like to start off by cleaning these in the bead Blaster so just so I don't get everything so filthy this one's pretty clean so I won't do this one I'll do this one so gonna go bead blast
we're back we got this one cleaned up pretty good I'll hit it again when I get it to fully taken apart it's easier to get the bracket in this shaft and everything now these are my jigs I guess what you would say now there's two different size you can probably I don't know if the camera can see that but it's for the so it rides on this Ridge here so when I press it off it's not going to distort damage or bend the pulley so it's a nice fit for each one and again it's I have to have a separate one for a large and a small bearing so this is what I got so let's put this up here and then I'm going to press it I'm going to push that down it'll take the pop the cap off and it'll push the bearing or the pulley off of the bearing but it'll be trapped on the shaft and the bearing will still remain on the end of the The Idler The Idler bracket that off
all right so this is not a fancy hydraulic press it's just the one you get at Harbor Freight or wherever made in China look at all this so push it in there set it up push my cap already fell off I heard it that's it and this is what I end up with I'll go ahead and I'll press the other one off and then I'll pull these bearings off and I'll show you how I do that it's just a regular bearing remover
all right then just snug it down you don't want to scratch the want to scratch the shaft on this thing so I just snug them down so I just go real light
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got these bearings off cleaned up as best as they normally do so this one is the early bearing and there's no part numbers stamped on these you typically we see a big S not always I think that's a manufacturer's mark But the small bearing ones typically do not have a part number large bearing ones do you can see there's a doaa number on this one here and so do the the service replacement and the 1970 and newer versions there's d0 D3 D5 d8 numbers for these they're all exactly the same ex with this larger pulley this larger bearings well these are exactly the same larger bearing it's the only difference most people can't tell the difference so all right now the next piece is straighten out our dust caps and hand fit them back in there so we can they can be seated on the on inside the lip on here and I'll have to what I'll have to do is I'll have to file a couple of notches so I can get it in there so it'll snap in and then I JB Weld it after that's the last step but this is you have to do this before we put the bearing back in here so start working on these all right so I got these already cleaned up before and prep for straightening and you can see they do get a little bit puckered up from when they were pressed in because that's the only way to get them off the alternative would be to drill a hole use a little bolt to press them off but you're still going to do the same thing but then you'd have a hole to clear up so what I'll use a like a body hammer tap these down flat then I'll dress it up on the grinder and the wire wheel because it does distort the full complete circle because I'm stretching the mat a little bit and that'll make it a little bit smaller and then I'll start filing little notches so I can index it and fit them in exactly where they go so we can go back and it'll be perfectly flat as possible so start working on these some some take longer than others basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to start working these down flush I just use it on a flat surface and I you know make sure that I've got you know holding it flat when I'm tapping on this thing I'll start with the big piece the big flat side to get it fairly flat and I'll finish up with the tip with the flat or the the other tip
and once I get it flat you can I can put it on the table and I can kind of you know use it as a straight edge and I'm satisfied with this one now that I've got these fairly you know as flat as they need to be because they it's they just need to be iron out the wrinkles and get it flat so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to dress up the circle I need to make it because it makes it when I flatten the middle it expands it slightly so this way it'll fit back in there and then I'll take I'll run it down you'll watch me do this then I'll put use the wire wheel and that'll kind of Polish it up more and knock the knock the sharp edges off just a hair so that's my process and that's the way I do it watch your fingers
so I can see the hair more straightening one low spot there this one too so I'm gonna readdress these a little bit make them better
foreign so what I'm going to do now I've got this smooth and flat again so now I need to make it make some little notches so I can use I'm not going to take these notches out I don't I'm not going to use a Dremel tool and take them out it's not worth it but some are it's hard to see but Summer's more pronounced than others so this one here is a lot less pronounced so that one will be the one that I kind of like slip it past the other ones I'll Notch out and I try to line up The Notches because you can barely see where they go and they use like some kind of a jig so they're like it perfectly with it 120 degrees apart
there so I'm going to set this up so it's going to be index so it only gonna be oriented one way so what a lot of times what I'll do is I'll just do this so I can make sure I clock it and then I'll mark where I want to where I'm going to file
so that is I'm not going to touch this one because it's really light and if I have to I can hit it but I'll do the harder ones first as I press the least amount of metal removal as possible so this is where we start I'm going to carefully put this in the vise snug it on the cap so it doesn't push it over bend it because my vice is well used
take my gloves off because I use the a one of the edges of this file is worn down more so one's sharper so I like the sharper side because it cuts a little better and just make a smooth constant Strokes because I don't want to go wide you can once try to
got a little bit of a notch there fairly even what I'll do is I'll dress this up and I'll show the camera what I've got [Music] I don't know if you can see that but I've got a little bit of a notch there now that's where I start and I'll do another one here and I'll see if I can pop it into place
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pass as you saw I dressed it up a little bit on the on the wire wheel again so now I'll try to test fit it in there
fits in there snug you know it's oh it's a little loose fit but the JB Weld will hold it in there it's not gonna it'll be it'll be in there flat so it'll look just like it did and the JB Weld help fills in a little bit of the cracks and when it's mounted in the car you really can't tell all right so now I'm at the point where I'm satisfied my caps both fit I'm cleaned up now I'm ready to press in the new bearing and you can tell you the only bearing only goes in from the front side front side of the this is the front side of the bearing the pulley because you can see there's these little lands down through down in there that that will stop the bear the bearing from going through so it's basically it's a stop both both of them have the similar things so let me lube it up it's a little dab will do you I don't like to put them in dry they'll go in dry they came out dry so eventually it just goes in a little easier while I'm at it might as well just go do ahead and do the shaft too
all right small bearing it's gonna go up there use this to push it in all right so I've got it all set up so I'm just going to press it in just walk it in It generally goes in pretty Square although I'm not this my press is a little bit wearing out a little bit now okay now once I get down there I'll re-center it because I don't have much of this Gap here with my uh little tool here I want to keep it going real square and steady
and even still they normally go in all the way but sometimes you have to now I'm feeling for where it's going to stop there it stopped now it's in all the way
and there you go and yep all right all right going back to these just it just occurred to me after I started this has a flat surface so you can so it's I push on the full bearing so I'm not pushing on the center and I'm not pushing on the outside the outside is preferred on this because I am pushed at this the it is going on to the out inside of the pulley outside of the bearing here so it's important to push on the whole thing so you don't don't distort it or anything these are pretty rugged so I don't think there's going to be ever be a problem okay and now what I use I use this cap again I'll leave it in there now finish it up and I'll post post or press the other side on gonna put my flat surface in there because I'm I want to keep the keep tension on the bearing not on the pulley because I don't want to distort the pulley because these are just steel they're mild steel kind of so I'll put that there put it on my flat thing
that in there set it up Square press it in there let's keep an eye on it where it goes in and it'll find its way it'll go and it'll seat itself you could if you want to come closer it'll seat itself against the inner uh race or part of the bearing there and it if I put too much grease and it's already starting to come up it'll start squirting out a little bit but I can also feel when I hit the bottom there I hit the bottle yep
now we've got a bearing it goes on there now just the next step is to clean it up and I'll put and put the caps on the JB Weld so and sometimes there's a little bit of a you can feel a slight little wobble and I checked with the bearing company and they do that on purpose they said because there's sometimes or they expect a little bit of expansion with friction so then that it accounts for the expansion of the metal so then it'll run true and it won't but sometimes this one doesn't have it but sometimes they do have a little bit of a slight wobble so so that's it except for the cat now we're at the point now where we're assembled we're ready to put the cap on but in order to use the JV well JB Weld likes oil clean dry contacts so I've already cleaned it used it with lacquer thinner and base I want to clean this um the Land There because I get probably a little bit of oil or grease from the thing and possibly a little bit of the sand from the bead blasting clean that and also clean your clean your cap The Ridge and the lower Edge a little bit just because you want a good you know good surface good cleaning thing I'll leave that up there and I'll put a little bit of JB 50 50. A little dab there
mix it up I use a popsicle stick you can use whatever
and you'll follow the rules on the directions on the thing because they say not to use it I think under 50 degrees or something so we're about 60 degrees in the in the shop today so basically I get a little bit and I carefully try to just put it in the thing you know a little gets but gets on the berry it won't hurt anything the bearing is not going to get welded in anywhere so I try to get a little bit work it around on that little bit of edge it's easier to apply it with a little bit smaller amounts than larger
okay now I line up my notch [Music] hopefully it all goes It goes back in there really easy and I just use this to tap it in so that looks good clean the residue with your towel and this you know clean spot basically or doesn't really have to be because it's cleaning up the residue voila we have a finished rebuilt bearing and the cap will be looking good and you can see that that is very close to how they were originally and just I just put I'll put this in the office where it's a little warmer overnight it just it just a matter of minutes usually to get the JB to cure but that's that's my process of how I do it and this is my experience after more than 250 different bearings that I've put in the bullies so the best way I could do it and then most of the customers that just painted black the whole thing because the service replacement ones are all black that's why they're black mostly or they've you know been redone at some point in their life but the NOS ones like I described earlier a little different so could finish them up however you want when you install them on your car