Help with halfshaft

[Levitan]

Some of you midwesterners might remember Mark Mich, with the Mini Mouse Festy truck and trailer. Anyways, he has a 90s Festy with auto that the passenger side halfshaft will not come out. He has even drilled a hole through the shaft by the transaxle, put a bolt through it and tried a porta-power to get it out. Nothing. Took the other halfshaft out, put a bar through to the back side of shaft and tried hammering it out. Nothing. Any help would be appreciated that I can pass on before he does a complete tranny swap to solve a halfshaft swap. Thanks!

[Damkid]

Unfortunatly there's not much advice that can be given, I've had an axle that didn't want to come out and I ended up scrapping the tranny

Best advice would be rotate the axle, try popping it out, if it still won't come out, rotate it again, try again etc,

[fastivaB6TG25MR]

i have a 4ft mac tools pry bar i use to pop my axles out...

[91blufestiva]

I've also used a splitting fork, stick the end between the tranny and the axle and just pound like a mofo on it.

Btw, nice seein you again supermodel!

[Festy46]

Like Damkid said, keep rotating it, but push it back in each time. Try using (or making) a heavy slide hammer puller that you can attach to the hub next to the transmission. I've found that a hard shock works better than applying increased pressure like with a porta power.

[Grey Vw]

I had the same problem when trying to swap over a tranny to another festiva and never did get one axle out. I ended disconnecting the axle at the cv joint the pulling the engine and tranny out then used a cold chisel and a mini sledge to finally get one side out. The other side never did come out.

Just disconnect it at the joint and and put on the new one.

[bravekozak]

I did not want to hear this. I have an axle that won't come out too. I will cry if I have to take the transmission out again. My prybar is only about 2 feet long. I will be trying again with a slide hammer. It's the driver's half shaft that's the problem.

[william]

I had this problem with a Toyota i cut the boot in the cv shaft closest to the motor and slid the shaft out so only the end was in the trany ( i did that so i could get a straight shot on it for pulling) and used a slide hammer with a 3 finger thing on the end took some time but it worked. I hope you get yours out !

[JPT]

2 pry bars, placed like wedges on opposite sides of the axle, and a few whacks to each one with a 5 lb sledgehammer did mine.

[mechanicaldj]

put it all back together and drive the car til fully warm
then try popping the shaft out while hot (you don't have to disassemble everything, just get it to come loose)

[Hot_Wheels]

slide hammer with axle removal attachment, it helps to jolt the shaft, we actully welded a bolt an axle and threaded the slide hammer on.

[Biff]

Rotational wiggling (does that make any sense?), might just collapse the spring clip on the end to close up on the tapers and allow the shaft to slide out, all the while using steady pry bar leverage.
I like all this, everyone has ideas, but long and short, you have to keep working on it till the thing comes out, .... use new or unmashed spring clips going back in.
Good luck!
I had a tough one and just kept getting bigger hammers, it came out , luckily only small case damage used Permatex Cold Weld.

[WmWatt]

Can anyone say what inside the transmission is holding onto the axle? I'm planning to replace the axles when the weather warms up and would like to know what I'm up against.

BTW a control arm dropped off during a slow turn in 2009 and pulled the axle out of the transmission. There's a possible solution for a stubborn axle, use the wheel.

[freshtiva]

Can anyone say what inside the transmission is holding onto the axle? I'm planning to replace the axles when the weather warms up and would like to know what I'm up against.

A circlip

[AlaskaFestivaGuy]

A circlip -- ok. But what it the circlip butting up against? Does anybody have any photos from a disassembled gearbox?

I have a car I was disassembling for parts up in AK, but couldn't get the passenger axle out. So I pulled everything out in one unit, separated the gearbox from the engine, put the axle (with gearbox hanging from the other end) in the vise, and started beating the crap out of it, figuring I was going to sacrifice the gearbox anyway. STILL couldn't get it to come apart. I then opened up the gearbox to see what I could see, but couldn't immediately figure out how to remove enough parts to see the circlip and its environment.

I would just be nice to have a real photo of the enemy, not just a mental image of what he might look like!