If it's anything similar to my Ariens, there's probably a little build up of rust on the shaft keeping the bearing tight. The bearing is also probably pressed on. I kept spraying PB Blaster on it for a few days (it was a Summer job) and made sure the shaft was as clean as possible before pounding it out (the bearing was junk before I started, so I wasn't worried about it). Be careful about damaging the end of the shaft (I used a combination of brass and lead hammers).
I should also state that I had taken my gearcase apart before this, as there was a sheared pin in the case- handling the impeller shaft was a lot easier than if the gearcase and augers were still attached.
Good Luck
Ralph

Ralph,
What should happen is the bearing should come off the shaft first and not go through the housing hole while attached to the auger driver worm shaft.
I soaked the bearing and shaft with WD-40 overnight. It came apart after wacking it with a copper hammer. The whole assemble, auger shaft, gear case and drive worm shaft together could then be pulled out.
I had originally thought the bearing was supposed to go through the whole but unsure. Good think I did not jump the gun and wack on the bearing so glad I waited.
David

After reading your response and what I wrote, I realize I was a little vague about the bearing going through the hole. As you found out, the bearing comes off before going through the hole. The hole in the Ariens housing is so much smaller than the OD of the bearing it was pretty obvious.
Note that since you hammered the shaft throught the bearing (while the bearing was against the housing?), the bearing is now trashed. I would strongly suggest you put in a new bearing and seat it with a deep socket upon installation.
Good luck,
Ralph

Ralph,
I had two MTD machines. One was rusted beyond use but it¡¯s auger drive assembly was good. To make a good machine I had to combine components from both machine. Both auger drive assemblies had to come out and a swap of impellers had to happen.

The first issue was knowing if the rear auger support bearing should go forward through it hole to remove the assembly through the intake shoot housing. No, as you mentioned the bearing has to be pulled off and the drive slide out after.

The first one was banged off while on the machine so probably damaged the bearing. For the second one I widened the whole and pulled the assembly through. A bearing puller had to be rented to get the bearing off as it was very rusted.

The next issue was getting the impellers off both drive shafts. Given how rusted one of the machines was and how difficult it was to get off the bearing getting the impellers off seemed impossible. I applied WD-40 overnight but after a lot of hammering with a long punch on the impeller lip neither impeller would move.

I emailed a guy who works on these things and asked if there was any magic way to deal with removing an impeller. He said no and that he uses PB Blaster. I picked up some PB and gave getting them off again another try. I put on PB for a few hours and after a number of attempts to get them loose they finally broke.

I¡¯m not sure if the success was due to PB or just repeated banging. As a test of I put WD-40 and PB on different sections of the very rusted impeller blades. After a half hour WE-40 did not creep very far beyond the 1 Â0Â5 strip I put on the blade. The PB spread itself over the whole blade. I put some extra WD-40 on the blade but it did not creep further. It was pretty interesting and the PB may have been responsible for helping things out. It¡¯s tough to be sure but I¡¯ll probably use PB instead of WD in the future.

I¡¯m new to snowblowers so the exercise was a good learning experience. After cleaning up the drive shafts and impeller insides I put them back on and found they fit fairly loose on their shafts so a rust bond should not be that bad. The very rusted machine was so bad the bucket was missing in places and paper thin in others. The bottom gear housing was half rusted away. It¡¯s drive and impeller were probably about the toughest rust condition I¡¯ll come across in the future so it¡¯s good to know that with a bit of persistence they can be separated.
Thanks for the help.
David

Here is a link that might be useful: Ke Dawei's website