Hub removal

By Jim Ellis
Published: December 23, 2008

Hub Removal by Jim Ellis

Hub removal is a problem at least that is what I hear. In my experience as long as you have the right puller it is not bad, you just need to get a good straight pull and they will pop off every time…. Well there was the one Tiger hub that required a blowtorch but lets not go into that one…

For most of us the main reasons to pull hubs are ditching wires or leaking seals, will go into the leaking thing more later, but for my S3 the conversion to a 2.8 Ford V6 resulted in a spun hub that mangled the hub and axle. I was told to replace the Woodruff keys with hardened units by V6 Jose [Jose sells the conversion kit to fit the V6] but not being able to source hard keys and having a hard head I ran the factory keys and as Jose says “They are as soft as butter.”

My S3 also had leaky hub seals like most Alpines, in the past I had replaced the seals but due to the grooves worn in the hubs it just leaked past the new seals. So this time I decided to try and actually fix this annoying problem once and for all. So with the hub and seal in hand off I went to the local bearing distributor and got a new seal and a repair sleeve to fit on the hub. The repair sleeve is a thin metal collar that you drive or press on the hub that gives the seal a new surface to ride on. This cured my hub leak but the sleeves are not cheap at $35 each. Still it is fixed and no more worries about leaking oil onto brake shoes.

One other reason the rear hubs will leak is there are a couple of special shouldered bolts that hold the cup the seal fits in to the backing plate these special bolts locate the seal holder so it is centered. If you are missing these bolts there is very little hope to cure a leaking hub seal.

Now with hardened axle keys and the leaks stopped up my rear end is ready for more abuse. I also installed a set of LAT bolt on traction bars and the new performance metal clutch is on hand and the Nitrous is ready to be installed so what breaks next…..