If you ever are in need of removing a stubborn pulley and just don’t have that proper puller, this tip will do the trick.

What you need is:
A standard 3 – 4 leg puller, a welder, set of torches, a hand grinder with paper disc, and three 3/8 nuts and three 3/8 X 2 1/2″ to 3″ bolts with 2 washers each.

I needed to change a primary shaft bearing on a two stage snow blower and removing the pulley was first on the agenda. The puller required to remove the pulley does not exist.

Normally when loosening the set screws on the hub of the pulley, this type of pulley would/should slide right off of the shaft. Of course that rarely happens, (only in the movies) on any pulley and in this case the pulley was froze tight to the shaft.

I cleaned the top surface of the pulley close to the hub and tack welded the three nuts to the pulley in-line with the three slots in the puller, removed the puller and stitch welded each nut on two sides each.

Notice the nuts are welded as close to the center hub as possible. The closer to center pulling straight up, the more pull power you have. And less of a chance bending the pulley.
I tightened up the center bolt of the puller so it is pushing on the shaft, heated the underside of the hub area, (center of pulley) right tight near the shaft.

I used a welding glove to hold the outer edge of the pulley and used a crescent wrench to turn the pullers bolt. The pulley came off and with no damage to the shaft. Just the way I like it. Now I was able to change out the bearing.

In this case I had to remove the three nuts I installed due to another pulley being to close after reassembly of the blower unit to the drive.

I used a 4″ hand grinder with med grit paper to remove the nuts from the pulley.
Like any grinding, take your time, grind nut to nut and remove a little of each nut at a time until complete.
This type of trick can be used on most metal surfaces that don’t have or provide a way to (pull) something off a shaft.