The two bearings were identical, BTW, except for one had Germany stamped into the edge of the outer race, and the other had Japan stamped there.
The old bottom outer race was much worse than the top one, and we had a little trouble grinding down a metal punch to reach down into those two holes, but that was the biggest problem of the whole job. The outer races hammered into the stem nicely after freezing them for about an hour while disassembled everything.
The inner stem coming up from the bottom tree has a very minutely smaller circumference at the top than at the bottom, so the bearing on the bottom had to be hammerd down to get it off, but it just slid fairly easily past the top wider portion.
Cleaned out the frame neck, put a little grease on the surfaces, heated the stem top and bottom slightly, and tapped those frozen outer races in very easily.
And here is a photo of me wondering how long it's going to take Rob to knock that bearing off. [;)]
Whole job, including lunch andplaying with new puppy took us a leisurely, and educational 3 hours.
Hope this helps someone else. My front end began to feel wonky at about 32,000 miles, but by the time I made it to Rob's house it was fearfully stuck in the middle at slow speeds. It felt like a magnet was pulling it to the middle.
Oh, Rob, the pinch clamp on thr front axel was fine. Thanks for worrying.
