On 12/3/2025, Chris Blake in Tasmania, Australia wrote:
After going through the various designs of rear hub nut tools on the site, I made up a tool to get the nut undone which worked well, octagonal hole in a piece of 100 x 10mm flat bar - held in place with the bearing housing bolts. Then I remembered one of your comments about having something compact enough to go in a traveling tool kit, so my next thought was to replace the long bar with a way of using a socket wrench and breaker bar, which then expanded into incorporating a way of extracting the bearing assembly from the axle casing as well, with the result in photos below. -- First idea - worked well but not too portable.

Cut down and usable with normal tools. -- Success! -- Second part - bearing extractor mode.

This bit was too shallow to stay in unassisted while fitting the plate - I used the plug from cutting out the Octagonal hole with a hole saw and had to grind the step in as I didn't have access to a lathe. (Very frustrating as a machinist, but I was on a roll and didn't want to wait a couple of days to get into a friendly workshop) -- Worked as intended ! -- Success.


Very happy - then one last idea... -- This will keep the plug in place when needed. If I did it again, I'd make up a plug with a longer spigot so it would hold itself in the axle tube but I'm happy with the results, it is small enough to fit in a toolbox and not too heavy. The biggest problem might be finding it should I ever need it again !!

Then this last improvement, machining the face opf the tool to leave the extended nose diameter to allow the tool to catch the full thickness of he thin nut without pushing the hub back on the bearing.