[Farmall] Gear puller

[Karl Olmstead]

I hadn't thought about ebay as a potential source.  I've been browsing the 
major machine tool vendors... MSC, Rutland Tool, Enco, etc.  I am definitely 
looking for something American-made.  The Asian stuff is often adequate for 
undemanding jobs, but when you're pushing the limit, American tools from the 
40's thru 60's are hard to beat.  My Monarch lathe was built in 1944, and I 
can hold tolerances of a thousandth of an inch or less quite easily on it.

I'm pretty sure that rust isn't a factor, since the steering gear sits 
inside a lube reservoir.  I doubt that there are any setscrews, but I'll 
have to check.  The gear is pressed onto a big shaft with two straight keys 
and secured by a large, fine-thread nut.  The castellated nut has a cotter 
pin to keep it from unscrewing from the shaft.  Hadn't thought about beating 
the shaft out of the gear; I'm sure it would work, but it'd be a race to see 
whether the gear came off or the end of the shaft mushroomed (even with nut 
in place).  I was pounding on the shaft of my puller with a 5-pound sledge, 
but no movement occurred.

The shaft is maybe an inch and an eighth in diameter, the gear over an inch 
thick, so there's plenty of mating surface.  Heating might help, but I 
suspect that the shaft will be warming up nearly as rapidly as the gear 
since they are obviously in intimate contact.

I don't absolutely HAVE to get the gear off, but at this point, it's a 
matter of principle (or tool lust).  I want a beefy enough puller to handle 
gears like this one, and since I broke the Harbor Fright unit, I obviously 
need a new puller.  I recall a discussion regarding gear pullers a few years 
back.  Somebody typed in part of a Snap-On catalog.  They offered a 'pulling 
system' that added up to well over a thousand bucks if you bought all the 
options.  If I can find a good, beefy puller for a hundred bucks or so, I'll 
be thrilled.  I'm just trying to get a feel for what kind of tonnage I might 
need.

-Karl