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Next Time, try this.
I bought a large tap, The bushing is soft so the tap cuts threads into the bushing easily.
Then I use a bolt the same thread pitch and size.
I thread it into the bushing, let it bottom out in the crankshaft hole and it pulls the bushing right out.
Easy and very effective.
But "cbernhardt" was had a roller bearing and not an OEM bronze bushing. They install and remove quite differently.
I used a tap on my last removal and it was indeed the simplest and surest means (and tidiest) of bushing removal. That hydraulic removal with grease or wet toilet paper can get messy.
The really fun part of my pilot bearing replacement was getting the old bearing out. I tried the grease and grease/bread method and none worked, I assume because the space created by the roller bearings allowed the grease to pass by. I borrowed a two prong puller from the local Chevy dealer, but the prongs were well used and, no matter how tight I adjusted it, they just slipped by the tapered part of the bearing.
I ordered a new two prong puller from Summit but it had the same problem. As you can see in the pictures below, the hole on back side of the bearing is tapered and the steps on the ends of the prongs are only 2mm wide, not wide enough to reach the flat part of the bearing. So when I tried to pull the bearing, the prongs flexed enough so they could not grip the bearing enough to pull it out. I did manage to pull a few of the bearings out of the race. None of the local auto supply houses had a puller that would fit, so I looked on ebay and found a 3 prong puller that was advertised as fitting into a 0.5” hole, which was the size hole in my bearing. Well, guess what, it was too wide to fit the 0.5” hole in my bearing, so since I already had torn some of the bearings out, I used a 0.75” drill and removed all the bearings. The three prong puller still would not quite fit but, I found if I removed the prongs and inserted them one at a time, and kind of twisted them as I put them into the hole, I could get all three into the bearing hole
So I tired the three prong puller and it felt like it was working, except, as you can see in the picture, the horizontal bar was bending. So the next step was to replace the horizontal bar with something more substantial. In my case I used a piece of 1”X 1.25” bar stock which did not flex, and finally the bearing was removed.
I may be mistaken, but I'm thinking that roller bearing was installed backward. Shouldn't the end with the radius on the inner edge be facing the transmission? I'd think having the end without the fillet machined on it facing toward the crankshaft would have made it much easier to get that bearing out of the crank also, as you'd have had a square edge to grab with the puller.
