Me again. Job done. I couldn't have managed without your video! Some notes for the benefit of others. Mine is a MOF96E Type 2 from 1991 or 2. One of the best, i.e. Swiss made and worth preserving if possible. Had some bearing noise for a while. I needed to get a job done urgently and battled through with a cutter that was too blunt. Lots of smoke, end now looks like coal. Pressure and heat sent the lower bearing to oblivion. The top bearing turned out to be rough too but in any case, it is false economy to only replace one bearing. If one has gone, the other will have been stressed. The effort needed to replace vs. the relative cheapness of bearings makes replacement in pairs the only sensible option IMO. As others noted, the circlip is easy if you remove the collet and the housing for the lock button, allowing the unit to plunge deep enough to bring the clip above the bottom of the switch cavity. I still had trouble releasing the pillars. There was a definite tap as it hit a stop when fully extended. I got some silicone spray in both sides via the hand grip sockets then repeatedly plunged/let it up. Eventually it popped apart. I made a tool for the large slotted nut in the base. Like an angle grinder forked wrench but instead of pins, I built up the tips with weld and ground/filed to fit the slots. I had the bottom with armature detached at this point and lightly clamped the armature in my Workmate. The nut was not too tight and I may have got away with the screwdriver and hammer method. Note that if you wreck the nut, it is still available from a parts supplier. So is the circlip. The tool made tightening on reassembly more secure. I used a bit of Loctite for good measure. My brushes are in perfect nick wityh plenty of wear left in them. There was an annoyance with the bearing purchase. Original bearings are NSK. Good British brand! I wanted to replace with same. Top is marked 608Z and bottom 6003Z. Both are actually ZZ, i.e. two metal seals. I found there are two variants of the lower bearing - standard and C3. C3 is a looser internal fit to allow for greater thermal expansion and is slightly more expensive. I watched a video about a Dewalt 625 router repair suggesting that C3 is correct but I was not sure if he had the right info or it is relevant to the MOF96. Not wanting to get this wrong, I bought bearings as MOF96E Type 2 spares from a parts supplier (Miles of Yeovil) rather than sourcing from a bearing supplier. This cost a bit more at just over £17 including postage. I received CW bearings made in China. They may be OK but fitting Chinese bearings to my classic Swiss router feels wrong. The CW bearings are marked 608Z and 6003LHV. Anyway, reassembled it without too much trouble. Half expected it to die spectacularly when first turned on but it seems to be running well and I am quite pleased with myself. Take your time. Take plenty of photos when stripping - a life saver in my case.

Thanks for the helpful video, just one hint: That safety clip (video 4:30) can be removed very easily provided you plunge the route ALL the way down. Then it is visible above the rim of the plastic housing and easily accessible.

Super helpful THANK YOU! (and some of the comments too) I have a MOF96E that has served me very well for 30 years. A well made piece of kit that has been a pleasure to handle. Been getting a bit noisy recently, and today got *very* noisy and a bit rough, so it looks like I will be doing this myself.

A few helpful points. Firstly to get the circlip off you MUST push the router down to the full limit of it's travel. Then it's sufficiently exposed to pull the clip off horizontally. To do this the end of the collet will be BELOW the base plate surface, so just putting the router down normally and depressing it until the collet hits the table won't be far enough! This is why he had so much trouble with the circlip. When you remove the top cover there is a tendency for some of the little crimp connectors to slide off, so watch for this. At this point I found I had a slightly different variant, in that the armature couldn't yet be removed. I had 4 additional screws in the base, surrounding the collet end of the armature, and removing these allowed me to take the cover off and revealed a threaded ring on the armature that had to be unscrewed before the armature could be tapped out. The threaded ring has slots and is presumably put in with a special tool, but fortunately wasn't tight on my router and could be unscrewed simply by putting a screwdriver in one of the slots and giving it a light tap. Finally, those three screws holding the internal bearing cover are TIGHT! If you chew them up you are, literally, screwed, so put the unit securely in a vice, get a good screwdriver that fits well, and lean on it hard before you try to turn it.

Just what I was looking for. My Elu 177 started running slow today. I took the top cover off to have a look and the top bearing has started to disintegrate. I'll dismantle the machine as you did and replace both top and bottom bearings. Very helpful, thank you

Thank you for that very detailed breakdown, and showing us all the gubbins inside the router. I have the same problem, and you have saved me a lot of time. I found two shortcuts that might be helpful. First is to avoid dismantling the plunge mechanism, use an offset screwdriver to undo the four screws that hold it to the plastic housing. It is then possible to gently drift the whole motor assembly off the plunge head leaving the lower bearing in place and then removing it from the plunge head as you did. The second is to turn the motor assembly over, and remove the top cover and rotary magnet as in your video, and then to gently drift the rotor assembly out of the motor casing, leaving the brushes in place. The upper bearing will then drift out of the housing. I have not reassembled yet, I am too cheap to order new bearings until I am sure I can fit them, but I am fairly confident that the rotor assembly will go back into the motor housing by pushing the brushes back out of the way with something non destructive like a wooden barbecue stick. I will let you know if it works when I get my replacement bearings. Thanks you again for giving me the courage to go ahead with a job I have been putting off.

Lovely job. I'm just doing a makita 3612br, which has essentially the same layout. I suddenly started doubting myself about knocking the armature through the bottom bearing (even though I had done this type of router before). Thanks for the reassurance.

Fantastic walk through. And great to hear your honest dialogue throughout. Thank you very much. What KZfaq was made for 😉

Pleased I found this demo I have take my router apart. Thank you.

Thank you so much for posting these 2 videos. I've had my Elu MOF 96 since the late eighties and was just thinking as I was using it yesterday how well it has lasted, then literally an hour later there was a terrible noise and the top bearing had disintegrated. Thanks to your video I have now dismantled it and have just ordered 2 replacement bearings. I used Steve Walker's shortcut to avoid dismantling the plunge mechanism and drifted out the whole armature from the top after removing the 4 bottom screws with offset screwdriver. One difference with mine is that there was the melted remains of a plastic spacer between the top bearing and the armature, this must have fried when the top bearing disintegrated, hopefully it will reassemble ok without this spacer, it looks like your's didn't have the spacer. On the parts diagram this spacer isn't shown on any of the variants.

Hello, I do not speak English and I use Google Translator. I also have an ELU 96/02 router that I disassembled because it makes noise while working. But I did not dare to disassemble more side bearing brushes, because there was this little brown disc that seemed to be crimped. Thanks to your video I could continue. And do not reassemble the circlips to make it easier to clean the 2 axes of diving is great. A big thank-you.

Be wary the Elu MOF96E Type 3 has the fan facing the other way around!! Took me ages to figure this out when reassembling the router. The shaft wouldn't move when it was reassembled. At first I thought the bearing wasn't seated properly but after giving it a tap, figured out it was in as far as it could go. In the end I turned the fan around and hey presto, it was all OK! When I then looked at the part diagrams on the internet, the fan is indeed the other way around on this version of the router as compared to the Type 1 router.

Thanks! Just what I needed right now...

Brilliant. Cheers mate.

Very interesting

This was helpful Sir

Doing this job today, due to motor slowing and bearing getting very hot. 2nd time I've done it but that is over forty years. So for interest the ball races in my MOF96 6003z for the business end and 608 for the commutator end. Hope that helps. The bearings cost me £12.34 including vat and postage.

Look for the DeWalt version (model no. DW625) for parts. Same router. They don't make this model anymore.

I have three of these but the first black ring you removed came off easy in the video, how did you loosen it?

Do these routers accept 1/2 bits?

Hi where did you get bearing from?

You should replace both sets of ball bearings at the same time as the one that as gone will put stress on the other till you realise the lower one as gone !