GonzoFreedom 25 yacht: Freedom 25: Lower Mast bearing removal

Well after a few months of putting this off, I final took the plunge and did a full Freedom 25 Rotating Wing low Bearing service. I learned a lot and hope these pics and info help anybody who is looking to do this work to their Freedom 25.

This pic is before I started, you can see the bottom of the mast is in fair condition some cracking of paint and laminate. The cable running down the mast is for the mast head light.

What you are looking at is 3 parts:

1. outer ring: Lower Grease seal

2. fat ring inside: old bearing is rusty and seized in the mast

3. smallest inner ring: upper Grease seal

Note: from looking at this for many months, it looks like the lower grease seal is a metal section laminated in the mast base (this is not so) and their are 3 screws threaded into mast which do nothing.

This is a side shot of lower mast, note the 3 small threaded holes are for 3 stainless screws. which I removed to find did nothing and attached to nothing in the mast.

This is a pic of the Lower Grease seal which was pressed in to the lower section of the mast.

Tool to pull:

1. puller, pic below

2. ice pick with tip bent 90 degress

Note: you can see all the old grease and dirt build up as this process moves along.

Pic of the puller, I used the pick to clean out old grease dirt and seal to give me room to install puller

This shows Lower grease seal removed and a tape measure to show the gap.

Note: the inner grey steel ring is the inner section of the bearing, and the rust colored material around the outside are the bearing rollers which are solid rust and holding it in place.

Bearing removed, this just pulled right out with pick and some penetrating oil.

note: you can see in the pic the race for the the bearing which is pressed into the mast.

*save old bearing, as it will be used to help press new Race into mast.

Mast Bearing race: after some cleaning you can see the bearing race which the bearing rolls on and the upper grease seal.

note: you can start to see that the end of mast is solid Resin, and that all these parts are press fit into the resin which is bored out to different diameters to hold each part.

Removal of Bearing Race is the hardest part of the job.

the process: est 2 hrs

1. use pick to clean out as much of a groove between upper section of Race and shoulder in mast.

2. soak with penetrating oil

3. I ended up grinding down the puller sections to a find point to help get behind the Race. I also made sure to pull evenly, rotating the puller 90 degrees often.

4. after the Race came half way out I used a dremal to cut Race section, which helped me to pull the race the rest of the way out of mast

Race almost out of mast, you can see were I cut the part.