Does anyone know of a trick to get that sneaky little bastard out without damaging the e-shaft? Or does anyone have a pilot bearing removal tool I can rent?

 

Do some searching. There is a thread that lists an Autozone part number for a puller. Works great.

 

The Autozone puller does not work for my pilot bearing, maybe they have a different one in your area?

 

I've never tried this puller so this is FWIW, but this looks almost exactly like the MAZDA SST I have....I think one of the two smaller tips should fit. At least with the MAZDA SST it takes all of 30 seconds to pull that bearing.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=95987

 

Bingo. This is the tool you need. Autozone has one you can rent. I've rented it from there to pull out the pilot bearing on my FD and FC engines with ease

 

Search for the toilet paper trick. Or you fab-up a horribly-difficult-to-use puller like I did.

 

I also had luck with the puller rented from advanced auto parts. I think it is the same one as autozone...

 

Use the toilet paper trick it is cheap and way easy. Works like a charm

 

I bought the one from Autozone and it works great attached to my slide hammer. I had to grind the tips down slightly so that it would fit through the pilot bearing. There's another old skool trick that you might be able to use, shove as much grease through the pilot bearing as possible until that hole is completely full of grease, then get some sort of metal rod that has a diameter as close as possible to the inner diameter of the pilot bearing. Stick the rod inside the pilot bearing and hammer inside the hole where all the grease is. Theoretically, it's supposed to push the pilot bearing out from the inside, kind of like a hydraulic rod pushing hydraulic fluid through a cylinder except in this case it would be grease instead of hydraulic fluid.
Last resort is to get some strong picks and basically destroy the old pilot bearing by pulling at each of the needle bearings and then pull out the casing, being careful not to damage the hole. You don't care about the old pilot bearing anyways since you're going to use a new one, so why not just destroy it to get it out?

 

Lucky me; I have a friend/mechanic with the actual Mazda tool... made things so easy. I ended up buying one from Mazda later on, though.

 

i cut mine out... be careful doing this if you try it.

 

dont forget to grease the new one when its in.

 

I have used a dowel pin or round stock and axle grease to extract bushings. The dowel pin must be a tight fit to work. Fill the cavity with grease and strike the pin with a hammer. This will exert hydraulic force on the bottom of the bushing and drive it out. I have never tried it on a needle bearing. Just another way to solve a problem. A puller would be my first option but in a pinch this may work.