Tool Foam

Working on my snowmobile again has me using my wrenches. My wrench drawer has been on my list for organizing. I bought a CNC at the start of this year and it has been very fun to organize the tools in a drawer in Fusion 360 and then have the CNC cut out their profile in some tool foam. On Saturday I made an insert for my wrenches.

Snowmobile

Now that the sled is running there are just a couple of loose ends to finish. Chief among them is fixing the brakes. They drag and definitely need a bleed.

To fix the drag my thinking was I'd need to pull the brake pistons and give them a once-over with some fine Scotch Brite. To do that I'd need to pull the caliper and to do that I'd need to pull the disc rotor.

The job started with a minor hiccup. I stripped one of the socket head bolts in the caliper. Thankfully by switching to a larger size hex key I was able to get the bolt out. Not often that trick actually works.

The disc rotor bolt was also somewhat of a challenge. It is an odd shape and requires a special socket. I have the socket but I had a hard time getting it to seat far enough on the bolt that I could put the torque I needed to on the wrench.

I made my way through, and once the outer half of the caliper and brake rotor bolt were off I tried yanking on the disc rotor. No movement. The rotor sits on splines on the track driveshaft. I figured it was rusted on like many of the other parts on the sled. It was getting late so I sprayed some PB Blaster on and gave it a night to soak.

In the morning I gave the rotor another yank. Nothing. I sprayed on some more PB Blaster and went on a hike. When I got back from my hike I was very hopeful the rotor would finally break free. This time I used a small pry bar. Still no movement. Bummer.

A search through the forums turned up a couple of posts with people facing the same problems. Many of the replies mentioned using pullers. Hmm, I think I've seen those at Horror Freight. Should I go buy them? I struggle in moments like this with what tool to buy. In general, tools that I know I will repeatedly use I don't mind spending some money on to get a well-made Western tool. But, for tools I rarely use I'm okay buying a cheap Chinese version. The problem is when a project is going sideways a good tool can straighten everything out. A bad tool can make it 100x worse ("the most expensive tool is a cheap tool"). I don't know that I'll use pullers enough to justify a nice tool. The folks at Garage Journal recommend the SnapOn (figures...) as well as the OTC or Proto. I've had very good luck with OTC tools and pretty good with Proto. But, both would take a few days to get here and be several times more expensive. I went back and forth but in the end decided to stay cheap today and I bought the 4-piece puller set from Harbor Freight.

It took some finagling to figure out how to get the jaws lined up and locked in. But once they were on I started to crank. The first couple times the jaws snapped off with a bang. In both cases the rotor itself had bent and the jaws then slipped off. I think initially I was using too small of a puller set. There was a balance between what jaws I could fit in the limited space behind the rotor and what jaws were big enough to get the job done.

I switched to the 6" jaws and a 3 foot breaker bar. I really started to put my weight on it. The wet noodles they use to make Pittsburgh products gave way.

Dang! Should've bought the nice pullers... Now I had a rotor that hadn't moved a millimeter and a puller stuck on with no easy way to get it loosened. I devolved into a primate and started to wail on the puller with a dead blow hammer. I believe this is the only time in my entire life that this did anything even remotely positive! After many blows I went to try and loosen the screw on the jaws and I could twist it with my fingers. The rotor must be coming off! I twisted off the puller and now there was enough space for the 8" jaws to fit behind the rotor.

The 8" jaws made quick work of the rotor now that it had mostly come off.

Lots of rust on that thing. I don't think I've ever had to work that hard to get a rusty piece off.

Some carnage from the puller.

That is 5 pieces of 1/8" plate steel that the lead screw of the puller was pressed against. It looks like they stopped a bullet.

A bent bolt from one of the puller arms. I'm very glad that didn't break and send pieces flying.

All's well that ends well. I'll be testing out Harbor Freight's return policy tomorrow morning.