Rich,
Unfortunately, you can’t use a press on all 424 cutlass bearings. The bearing chamber (or shaft tube) in my boat’s strut wraps around and closes at its forward end like a blunt, hollow-point bullet, leaving only enough of a hole for the shaft to pass through. So you can’t get anything like a washer up against the forward end of the bearing to pull it out. I ultimately had to cut a lengthwise wedge out of the old bearing with a sawzall to loosen it enough so I could tap it out of there. This necessarily left cuts in the chamber’s forward enclosure, but it doesn’t matter. They can be used to guide the sawzall blade next time the old cutlass bearing refuses to budge. In fact, next time I may just slice the forward end off the chamber, making it an open tube that would allow the use of a press.
One little trick I learned from the yard manager here. When I installed the new cutlass bearing, I left about an inch of it sticking out of the rear end of the chamber, enough to grab with a pipe wrench so that I might be able to work it out next time. This also left an inch of space at the bearing’s forward end, so I can at least get a punch up against it through the shaft hole. Hope I don’t have to mess with it for another 10 years, though.
Tor
Silver Heels, P-424 #17
http://www.SilverHeels.us
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