I’m a newly registered member here but have been a reader for quite a while. Most recently I was searching all over the web for a way to get the inner bearing races out of my hubs. Strangely, one of the Axle Teknology hubs on each of my 5,200 lb. Lippert axles has plenty of edge to drive the race on but the other hub on both axles has zero edge protruding. It looks like to me somebody at the foundry grabbed the wrong core for two of my hub castings or somebody at Lippert grabbed the wrong hubs.
I took the hubs to our old standby local auto machine shop thinking they would have the right tools to press the races out and they just shook their heads. They suggested the weld bead approach, but I didn’t really want to heat the casting too much in one area and I wanted a fix that would allow me to service the bearings anywhere between here and Alaska if necessary.
I decided to see if I could grind some undercuts behind the races with my trusty Dremel Tool. I was a little concerned about removing any material until I realized the other two hubs had 1/8” less material already, and they had the same outside diameter. Creating a stress riser was another minor concern, but a generous radius with all the edges rounded off would not be an issue. Since it worked out so well and took much less time than all my fretting over it (confession: I’m a retired engineer…) I thought I should share.

While it looks like there might be an edge there, that corner of the race is nicely radiused and nothing would stay on it, no matter what kind of edge I ground on the punch.
Just to make sure material removal didn’t cause an issue, I ground the undercuts adjacent to two opposite lug studs where there is a huge boss of cast material outside the bearing race area.

I used a 5/8” diameter by 3/8” long grinding wheel at 20,000 RPM. I “dressed” the wheel a few times by grinding on a junk bearing race. Each undercut took less than 5 minutes.

Now, after deburring the shoulder the race stops against, cleaning up the grind swarf and reassembly, my bearings can be changed with the tools I carry in the truck all the time.
My $.02 worth on the EZ Lube debate… I bought my trailer used with very few miles on it. I can’t even measure the brake shoe wear. The dealer said they “checked the wheel bearings.” One bearing sounded rough and when I got inside them, two brake assemblies were full of grease. The other bearings (Chinese) had scratches in the races I could pick up with my fingernail so I replaced all the bearings with Timkens. (My fingernail is still calibrated from many years in the hydraulics industry.) I want a fresh start. I will not use the EZ Lube feature due to the brakes. I will check the bearings for endplay and noise and repack them by hand next winter. If the bearings look good I’ll probably go to a repack schedule of 3 years or 12k miles, or before any very long trip.
Thanks