Originally Posted by
Dan Burkhart
I know this is an effective technique, but do you have any concerns about the effect of the axial impact on the bearings against the cup in the course of driving the crank off this way, or am I concerned over nothing?
IMO, unless you pound them in with a steel hammer, there's no concern. If you're super concerned you can use a brass or other soft face hammer.
There's all sorts of concern about brinnelling a bearing with a hammer, but it's actually very hard to do. It might be a legitimate concern for precision or high speed bearings where it might be enough to cause vibration, but not (IMO) in the bike world, where low speeds and normal wear would render it a non-issue. The vast majority (all?) of "brinnelled" bearings we see on bikes are the result of false brinnelling or fretting, not impact damage of any kind.
When I consider questions like this, I make my decision based on a 3-step test. Theory, practice & materiality. Can you brinnel a bearing this way? - possibly. Will you do so? -- not likely. Might you do so to an extent that was material to the life or function of the bearing? --- extremely unlikely.
BTW- I might add that these are intend for use on fairly expensive machinery, whose spindles run at high speed on ball bearings. Many of these machines use hammers and wedges to remove taper fit tooling, including the workhorse Bridgeports we see everywhere