Repairing Failed CV Covers/Joints

You are underneath your car working around the engine bay and that is when you notice:  the passenger side (Right) CV joint on your Spyder has a hole in it.  Damn!

As you start working on removing the axle, you immediately figure out that you have to buy a 30 mm socket to remove the axle nut.  Once the nut is removed, you find that the axle does not easily slid off the hub.  Lots of penetrating oil later and generous taps with a 5# maul and the outer axle comes off.

Now you start on removing the inner axle which is held in place by a cast iron carrier

bolted to the engine by 3 bolts.  The lower two bolts, while really tight, finally come off by using a generous sized cheater bar.  Now the only bolt left is at the top of the carrier.  Now your real problems come in!

The top bolt in the axle carrier is obstructed by a:  bulge in the carrier casting in front of the bolt

; plus a bulge in the engine** casting to the right of the bolt. 

 What this means to you, as a mechanic, you can get a socket on the bolt, but there is no way to put the ratchet handle --- with or without extensions, swivels, etc. --- on the socket.

Ditto on using a pass through socket.  Ditto on using a flex adjustable ratcheting open/closed end wrench as well.

The only tool (Dev and I found) that will work is a plain old 14mm open end wrench.  From below the car ---- while the car is on jack stands ---- you can't get enough leverage,or even a decent sized cheater bar to fit the socket.  From the top you can get a cheater bar to reach, but (because of interference from the motor's header assembly), you can only turn the bolt about 1/8 turn each time.

So my question to you "Master Mechanics" out there: is there a better way to remove this obstructed bolt... that you have actually used yourself?

Finally, we had all three bolts out and proceeded to attempt to remove the inner axle (with the carrier still attached) by pushing and then gently tapping the carrier itself.  No, nothing, nada. The axle refused to move.  Turns out that the carrier is "Trapped" by the **bulge in the engine casting previously described.  The only way I was able to push the carrier far enough away from the engine casting bulge was to use extended pry bars and brute force to push the carrier physically away from the obstructing engine bulge.

So my question to you "Master Mechanics" out there: is there a better way to clear the carrier away from the obstructing engine casting bulge... that you have actually used yourself?

Finally, for now, once you have the inner axle off and you have clear access to the obstructing casting material on the carrier, do you take the opportunity to grind off sufficient clearance area that you never have to go through this ass ache again?

Paul