King Kutter Spindle Teardown/Rebuild

[njschwartz]

I have an FM72 that honestly has been nothing but a pain of late. I had a spindle go bad last year and opted to replace them all as it is a bit older anyway and several of them were a bit sloppy. All was fine until recently when one of the new ones basically blew out on me not sure if that is a quality or grease issue or something else. Anyway, I see I can replace the bearing myself instead of replacing the entire spindle for a lot less money. I have searched for a video on this but every other brands spindles seem to be different than these. I cannot find any that use clip rings like these do. I assume the only way to disassemble it is using a press to push the center rod and bearings out all together or am I missing something? Once I have it out I am not entirely clear where these clip rings belong. There is a groove on the shaft from what I can see where one would go on each side but not really clear on the other two. I am sure if I just work on it I can eventually figure it out, but I would prefer to do it right from the start. If anyone has any info, guide, pictures, or a video of how it should all look coming apart and going back together I would greatly appreciate it. I have of course looked at the king kutter manual diagram of the spindle but to be honest it isn't really clear. Thanks everyone!

 

[Midniteoyl]

Haven't had mine apart yet, but as far as I can tell its simply removing the Snap Rings and pressing the Spindle out then tapping the bearings out.

 

[njschwartz]

Thanks! I saw this video but it was not entirely clear how he got it all apart. I did mess with one of the spindles today and got all 4 snap rings off. 2 of them sit on the outer sides of each bearing right next to each other. Even with those off the center shaft does not come out so I assume my only option is a press which I have to borrow. Hopefully it will be relatively obvious once apart how to get it back together. We shall see.

 

[Mike1955]

Up front sir I must say I don’t know. But I have knocked a lot of shafts out with an average hammer. Just don’t spread the shaft where you hit it because it will the be difficult to reassemble