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I am curious however, about how to even get to the bearing between the primary drive sprockets and the clutch basket? The shaft pulls out but the rest of the assembly looks pretty tight. And for that matter, how to get the needle bearings out? The tips and trick section had a post where someone used a large socket and hammered a bad bearing out that way but not sure if that's a good idea for a bearing that isn't damaged....
There's a circlip inside the basket that holds it onto the primary sprocket. Once you remove that you can get to the bearing.
I used a cheap bearing puller tool to remove it. I figured I'd save myself some grief and just buy the tool. Came in handy for the bearings on the final drive:
http://www.harborfreight.com/bearing-separator-and-puller-set-93980.htmlOh, those needle bearings are tough to get out!
I think I spent half a day trying to get those out using a brass drift, screwdrivers, needle nose pliers, plenty of penetrating oil, heat (from a electric griddle) and I could not get them out.
I finally broke down and purchased a blind bearing puller:
http://www.harborfreight.com/blind-hole-bearing-puller-95987.htmlIMO, this tool is necessary to get those bearings out. It's not cheap, but it works (actually I might have picked it up on sale now that I think about it). If you pull these bearings, make a note of how deep each one sits in the sprocket unit. I damaged a new one installing it because I thought it wasn't in there deep enough. When installing the new ones, heat the sprocket unit up on an electric griddle (I put it between the 200-250f setting) and use lots of gentle taps rather than harder ones. There's really not much case strength to those needle bearings. The bearing on the one side is recessed some, so save the old bearings so you can use one of them to help drive the recessed bearing into place.
And yeah, no matter what method you use, I'm pretty sure these needle bearings will be damaged upon removal.
You may be able to rent those tools for free from you local Pepboys/autozone/advancedauto/etc.
All that said, do you think your bearings are in bad condition? I replaced, mine, but honestly mine were ok. When I took the old ones to my machinist (as reference for the groove) he was like "what's wrong with these?" I did it because I'm trying to make my engine "like new" and I wanted the learning experience... but all this stuff starts adding up to a lot of money