I had to change the clutch in my wifes heep today (4.0L). Well I broke my fawkin slide hammer trying to get the pilot bearing out. I didn't have anything else that would pull it, so I decided to try the grease and punch method.

Man that shit works slick. The hardest part was packing the grease behind the pilot bearing. I found the appropriate size socket punch and popped that damn thing out effortlessly. I literally only had to lightly tap it out. I beat the hell out of it with the slide hammer and it didn't budge.

It's messy, but certainly gets the job done. I'd like to know the guy that figured that one out.

I prefer the aggresson method, a cold chissle and a BFH

i used the grease method a few weeks ago and i was truly amazed. some old time jeeper guy told me about the method and it worked better than he said it would. very cool

instead of grease you can use bar soap cut into slivers and drive it in

easier clean-up

back when I had a stick, I used wet paper towels. of course some of you probably go with used toilet paper :flipoff2:

Easy

basic hydraulics in action... simply amazing!!

I tried the 'grease' method on my 4.0 jeep pilot bushing, no go it simply was not going to come out that way. This is because there was no way the grease was going to go behind the bushing - it was flush against the surface, it just wasn't going to force its way in there.

So what I did was buy a large nut and bolt, 3/4 I think, and tack the nut to the bushing. Then I threaded the bolt through the nut (and through the bushing), where it drove the bushing out as it tightened against the surface of the motor where the bushing was mounted. Worked great.

I think you have to be careful not to heat everything up too much of course. but if you are stuck because the grease method doesn't work for you, try this method.

Originally posted by Aggro
basic hydraulics in action... simply amazing!!

You can say that again. Got me thinking about some sort of hydraulic hammer.

I'll keep the used toilet paper in mind for next time. Doesn't seem like it would work as well, but appearantly it will. The other ideas are good to.

You got to be careful with the cold chisel method and slide hammer methods if you have ever rebuilt a motor you noticed that there is only one main bearing that takes the thrust and it has a pretty small area that you are beating on. It is not uncomon to see a main bearing spin a couple thousnad miles after a clutch job. Especially on some import cars. the grease method usually doesn't take much force but if you are gonna have to hit it hard I prefer to run a tap through the pilot bushing or pop the rollers out of the bearing and tap the outer race, and then just pop it out by threading in a bolt.