Don't use a vise to try to remove your U joints

[slag]

I tried this last night with my 6 inch larin vise and now its a broken piece of crap.

I tried to press the u joints out with the vise and instead it broke the jaw off.. My beautiful vise is now worthless..

So, i went and bought a 20 ton shop press for $149.99 and pressed them out without any problem.

Joe

EDIT.. just called LARIN and you can buy replacement JAWS!!!!! WOOOT..

 

[XplorerKid]

i used the Vise/socket trick to do my Ujoints....

only thing i broke that nite was my Digital Camera that fell off the workbench

 

[DeRocha]

I tried that with my U-joints and they didn't move a single mm. I ended up getting the "C" clamp press and it worked well. A press would be nice, but I don't have the room for a tool that would get limited use...

 

[slag]

as much machine work as I do, I can count 4 times in the past month that I could have used a press but instead went to a machine shop where they charged me $40.00 to press a bearing from my toyota rear axle

OUCH.. and no more

It sucks when you are doing a brake job or anything for that matter and realize you should probably get a new bearing pressed on as well, but cannot because its the weekend and no machine shops are open until 9 am monday morning when you are at work.. This happens way too often for me.

On a side note, when I pressed out my U joint, I slightly bent one of the tangs that the ujoint cap sits in. How can I bend it back out straight? I was thinking of heating it with my propane torch but am not sure if it will get hot enough to bend.. The problem with it now is that my C clip cannot fit in the channel because the tang is bent in a bit.

Joe

 

[MustangShane]

Well, dont use heat. When you do that it removes some of the strength from the metal. That in turn could cause it to fail under load. Your best bet is to try to duplicat the force that bent it in the opposite direction. But take it slow... cold bending makes it easy for things to crack.

 

[glfredrick]

Harbor Freight has their u-joint/ball joint C-Press on sale again at 29.95 with a lifetime gaurantee... makes for a pretty good tool in the tool box. I have one and it works great.

 

[slag]

I found out a set of new jaws for my vise is $24.00 shipped, so, I'm sending out a check first thing tomorrow morning!