Round two:
This one was the next bearing job and it was insane.
I was able to push the stubborn axle out with just three not specially hardened bolts with standard washers ; but I knew this other job was coming so planning ahead, I bought some 70mm 10.9 bolts and I cut the center out of old of my old brake rotors I just replaced.
Cast iron and 5 bolts, should work much better than 3 soft bolts and washers!
(True: very much did).
When the axle just gave me the finger when I hit with the 3# BFH (long handle version you can apply 15-25,000# impacts with this thing), I already had my plan.
The setup looks like this. The 1" bolt goes through a large plate to cover the hole in the rotor, 5 10.9 bolts hold the old rotor center to the hub, a magically sized 10" Milwaukee adjustable wrench that actually opens up to 1.5" fits between the "lug bolts" and a jack stand holds that from turning.
Since full impact could apply 70,000# or more and I knew if the axle is really stuck it could apply more force than cast iron could handle I tightened the bolt by hand estimated the torque to be about 300 ft·lb and the axial force calculated to about 20-22,000#.
Ouch! Slightly too much!
Glad I didn't have my brother at his machine shop turn that down.
Also glad that by some miracle my other rotor didn't get tossed into the recycling pickup the DAY before!
So: attempt two;.
I just kept the whole rotor for strength and used it backwards.
This time I torqued to about 350 ft·lb (estimated 28,000#) and nothing happened other than I started to mushroom the axle: make sure to leave the axle nut partly on at this point to help clean up threads if you need to use this level of force.
The axle still didn't start moving so since the "drift pin" aka 1" grade 8 bolt good for about 70,000# was already preloaded to 28, I figured smack that sucker with the BFH and add 10-15,000 more.
Well; 43,000 was enough; the damned thing started moving!
Three or four hits it moved enough the bolt was hand loose!
I re-tightened to the 28k and "rinse and repeat".
After about 4 repeats the force required dropped below 25,000 and I could just keep turning with my beautiful new ratchet breaker bar.
I pushed in until the axle nut landed then I had to remove the jig to remove the axle nut and then reassemble to continue.
For those with a keen eye will notice that the photos are no longer front of e53 but the process will be identical.
Since I don't want to have a 25# rotor as a tool I cut that down after to about twice the thickness of the one that shattered and I know how much torque to apply for preload without breaking the sucker so the improved rotor center plate;
I cut as close as I could with angle grinder to the brake surface but I just realized I probably could have cut from the inside and got it thicker. I'll probably do that the next time I do a brake job. Took maybe ten minutes and a 4AH battery did it on one charge.
How's this for serendipity?:
The plate that broke was spot in perfect for pushing the hub out of the bearing!
Initially to get it going I put the pieces in behind the rotor convex side out (the obvious way) and that worked great because it's a tight fit and kept them from tipping out of the way.
But per usual once you get the hub moving the plate just tips out of the way and tries to bend the bolts.
So: I loosened the bolts and put three plate pieces back in but convex side in! With the lip towards me!
This caught on the bolts and held them in while tightening!
That pulled the bearing race out of the outer bearing and then just a few smacks with the slide hammer and it popped right out!
You could create the same tool with hardware store stuff.
I bought two of the 8" long grade 8 1" bolts for like $10 and you could use some pipe flanges for the center push plate. The main trick here is using an old rotor as the main push plate because it's of course an exact fit to the hub.