I've always opposed the practice of grabbing a hub puller as the first method of removing a blower. This video by Brad Hicks with HVAC in SC on YouTube demonstrates the exact method I use to safely remove a blower wheel without damaging anything. Thanks, Brad!

Transcript

What's going on, guys? Here's another 60-second tech tip. This is going to be on removing blower wheels from blower motors. I see a lot of guys that will just get a fancy puller. They won't do any prep work on the motor shaft; they'll just drop their puller on there and try to remove it. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it gets everything bound up to where you have to replace the blower wheel.

Basically, what I do is just loosen the set screw. You can see how rusty this one is right here, but loosen the set screw and force the wheel on the hub down farther. You can see now we have some clean metal, and then I just take a couple minutes to just with a piece of Emery cloth or sandpaper just clean this shaft up really really good. Like I said, take a couple extra minutes to prep that shaft. Once that's nice and clean, you just grab something some sort of lubricant rust breaker, WD-40 in this case. Spray a little bit on there, and nine times out of ten, this wheel will come right off—no problems at all without any puller. So, that's what I do. Hope that helps. Thanks for watching.

—Brad