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Johnson Evinrude Gearcase Bearing Removal

In this video I remove the bearings from a Johnson 30 HP lower unit. This involves driving out the bearings, pressing out one bearing and pulling out the seals and bearing race.

Johnson Evinrude Gearcase Bearing Removal – Video Transcript

Hey there Dangar Stu here. Today's video is about stripping all the bearings out from this Johnson 30 horsepower lower unit and is proudly sponsored by MarineEngine.com.

We've still got the bottom oil seal in here and bearing under there that was quite rusty and now it's rusty and painted so both of those are going to have to come out. I'm going to have a go at using this spigot bearing puller to try and get them out to avoid any real damage to this edge which is already quite chipped and quite fragile. The legs move in and out so I'm going to set the legs to the width I need to sit on the gearbox. I then need to rotate the nut here so that the puller can drop down low enough so the hooks go under the oil seal. Then as we wind this top nut down this little cone here pushes the legs outwards to grip the oil seal and then we have to lift the whole thing up see if we can pull it out. So, this is the nut now as we wind this one it pulls this whole assembly up. Hopefully bringing the oil seal with it.

So, it was coming out but I've reached the limit of travel so I might have to put some blocks under these little legs to get it up higher. There's our oil seal out. You can see in there now we've got a bearing for the drive shaft which is in terrible condition. So, we're going to pull that out - just going to tighten these legs up to reduce the flopping around. Now it looks like the smallest diameter that I can get these hooks to is just a bit too big to fit through this bearing. But I think it's close I'm actually going to try just hammer it through. Given the bearings going in the bin I can't see any harm in giving that a try. There we go. Okay coming down brings the jaws out.

Let's see if we get this bearing out. Feels like I popped them so it shouldn't be too hard. Looks like this might want to be one of those rare times where ratchet spinners reasonably useful. Okay there we go one very dodgy drive shaft bearing. This is the replacement bearing that I got from MarineEngine.com and you can see here the bearing itself is inside the housing. What I'll do now is press the bearing out from a little carrier and we'll put the new one in. All right we don't need the bed for the press so low so we lift this up a bit. Now we'll just put these two metal blocks together.

We need the blocks far enough apart so that they clear the bearing itself. But close enough together so the housing can rest on them. Looks like with this bearing sixteen millimeter sockets the right size. I'm just putting a little bit of solid bar on top of the socket so I don't move the RAM too far. Here we go. You can see this housing is quite clean on this side and it almost looks like a sort of rubber seal here. I'm presuming it's just gum. So, I'm going to quickly put this on the wire wheel to see what it really is. Yeah so it's just a bare metal housing.

When we go and do the reassembly videos we're just going to press the fresh bearing into this and reinstall the whole thing. Next thing we're going to remove is the bearing race for the forward gear I'll show you that. So, there it is at the back with a surface rust on it. So, it definitely needs to get replaced. What are those planning's use to try and get this out is a slide hammer with an attachment like that. This attachments too thick to get behind it so I'm going toput it on the wire wheel see if I can grind it a bit thinner. Obviously, you need the strength steel but these are replaceable tips so I'm not so worried I'm willing to give it a shot. If it doesn't work we'll try something else. I've gone for a bit of a wedge shape so we'll see if that fits under.

That's fitting now so I think we're in luck. It's not a great edge but we'll see how we go. That wasn't hard I love it when things are that easy it gives the illusion I know what I'm doing. So, you can hopefully see there this bearing race is quite rusty there was water in the gearbox and obviously it's been open for a month. It's not great I shouldn't have taken so long to get back to this. From losing parts, memories fading about how things came apart, you're always much better off just doing these jobs quickly if you can. Alright next we're going to look at the lower to drive shaft bearings. Hopefully you can see down the bottom there are two more bearings.

Now the service manual gives a list of about 5 different custom tools that you assemble to get those out. As far as I can tell though the procedure is to essentially push them down into the gear case and then pull them out. I'm just going to grab a socket the same size as the bearings, put an extension on and see if I can hammer them both through. Looks like a 19 millimeter socket should do the trick. All right. There we go. Two more pretty main key looking bearings as well as being a bit rusty I think they've actually got some of the blasting powder from when the paint was stripped off. So, we definitely need to replace those as well. The real tricks going to be getting the new ones into their correct positions. So, if you've ever done that job before comment with your tips. We're getting close to having everything out now.

I think the last thing I need to remove now is the bushing for the shift linkage. This is the shift linkage here and this is the bushing. There's an o-ring that goes the inside one on the outside and we need to pull this out of the block. Once again as far as the service manuals concerned blah blah blah custom tools. I'm just gonna put a bit of threaded rod down through the bushing. This is the threaded rod I bought to pull the bearing carrier out. Which is quarter-inch I think from memory and it fits through here just. So it's all I'm gonna do is put this through reach in put a nut on the end and use the slide hammer to pull it out. The shift linkage bushing is just in here.

So, I'm gonna put this threaded rod down into that bushing. Now the threaded rods come right through. I'll put a couple of nuts on the end and then we'll pull it up. It's a little bit tricky to get the nut on the end. What I'm going to do is just use two fingers to hold the nut in position and see if I can rotate the rod to get it started. The other thing that's important is that whatever you put on the end of the threaded rod is not bigger than the outer diameter of the bushing. Otherwise it won't be a pull through. I don't have any particularly clever way of attaching the slide hammer to that threaded rod. But what I do have is a pair of vise grips that have an attachment to go onto the slide hammer. So, I'm just going to use that.

It's got the slide hammer itself's a bit heavy I'm just going to get the right distance on the jaws first. All right I think that'll do it. Turns out that although the nut I've got at the end here is smaller than the bushing itself. So, that's kind of what I was going by I think I could pull it through. But the hole that this shift rod finally comes through is smaller than that so I'm going to put this nut onto the grinder and make it smaller. So, this was the original nut like this and I've now grounded it down to be like that on the wheel. So, this now have checked this does fit through the hole.

All right in a try a different tact. What I am doing is just drilled a small hole in a bit of plate steel. I'm going to put that on, put the threaded rod down and then just try cranking the nut down to use it as a puller. So, we rigged up now some washers,the nut the plate, inside here you can't see but I've got the rod pulled up as far as I can go with the nut hard against the bushing. So, we'll just keep cranking this nut down and see if we can pull it up. Still feeling pretty tight. I'm hoping it's stuck from corrosion and not that that nut on the end is catching on an edge somewhere. Yeah, I think it came up a little bit, we're in luck. So, cranking this nut until we've got it all the way out. So, there we go there's a bit of a nylon piece that goes on the bottom that's pulled in maybe that was for making it hard but it's out.

This old bushing its actually an o-ring housing. It's probably still serviceable you could probably put just new o-rings in, reinstall it, it'd probably be fine. So, after that experience I probably recommend going this way. The trouble with a slide hammer I think is that it's just a little bit of play in everything. You've got the you know the lower unit in the stand and the stand wobbles a bit. There's a bit of cushioning from that nylon washer so I'd probably go straight to this technique next time. That's everything out from the lower unit now. What we need to get out now is two oil seals and a bearing at the front of the bearing carrier and a bearing at the back here. To get them out I'm gonna drive them with just a hammer and a punch from this side.

Their little spigot bearing pour I've got doesn't reach deep enough into grab it. It'll probably grab this side actually so I might give it a go here but it won't reach the far side or the propeller side. Once again I'm just going to put the little blocks under so I can get the extra distance I need to pull it right out. So, there we go one bearing this is the bearing closest to the dog clutch. I'll try using a socket to drive the other one out from this side through because the bearings are the same I'm going to use this bearing to find the right size socket. Looks like a 17 millimeter sockets going to do the trick. I'm going to use a couple of timber off cuts.

From the boat strong back just so that the bearing can come through. Oh and in case you're wondering it's perfectly acceptable to hammer on extensions and sockets and things as long as they're yours. Alright two old sails and a bearing. So, it looks like these four bearings are the same the two from the bottom of the drive shaft and the two from the prop shaft bearing carrier. So all four of these and we'll put new ones in. Alright well that's it for today. We've got everything stripped now so I'm going to give this a really good clean so I can see a little bit of residue still from when it was sandblasted. So, we'll make sure all of that's gone and then next time we look at his gear box we'll start putting back together. All right well thanks for watching and I'll catch you then. See Ya