Quick answer - Hyundai axle removal

Hopefully someone has a suggestion on how to get an axle out. 

I'm helping my sons fix his girlfriend's car, a 2013 Accent. The passenger side axle is fighting us an not popping out of the trans. 

He started with pry bars, but working on jackstands limits the room to get a lot of leverage. I brought over the slide hammer and chain, but there's not enough room to get the chain being the inner joint to get a good bite. 

I ordered these:

and he tried them yesterday, but wasn't having any luck getting them to fit in behind the CV housing. 
 

Im going to head over there at 9, and give him a hand. I plan to get the trans mount out of the way, then see if I can get the axle to cooperate. 

I'm hoping it's just he was just not getting a good  angle on it, but not sure. 

Any suggestions on how to get the axle to come free from the transaxle? 

I've got a full day, so I'm hoping to be able to get it free in under an hour. 

Sometimes they suck.

Try beating it back in, then rotate a bit, then pry.  You are probably trying to center the snap ring in the groove.

Pain in the ass.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Thank you, so just persistence and brute force. 

I figured it was going to be a pain in the ass, but hoping there might be a trick. 
 

Way back in the olden days, there was a special punch for Ford Eskorts.  The inner cv on the left was buried in the trans, with zero access. So you would pull the right axle, put in the split punch that wrapped around the diff pin, and beat the left one out.

Back in the day for real stuck axles on DSMs.

-Get the axle out of the knuckle.  Have a helper monkey hold it straight out from the trans and put a little pressure on it (but not a lot, dont want the ring to bind)

-Get a fat chisel in between the axle and the trans and give it 1 or 2 good whacks.  If it doesn't come, rotate the axle 180 degrees and try again.

Never failed to get an axle out that way.  But DSMs have pretty good access to the axle-to-trans flange.  

No luck this morning. I'll get back over there around 3:30. The CV separate to it's just the cup and axle stub to work with, and the torque mount is removed to create space.

I left him with instructions to go get a big pair of vice grips. Clamp them to the CV cup where the lip is for the boot, and beat the vice grips with a hammer to give something to hit. Give it a few good hits, rotate and try again. 

If that doesn't work, I'll weld a nut/rod to the vice grips to connect the slide hammer and try that. 

I typically pry axles out, but had a situation with my Rav4 where the rear axle wouldn't pop out via prying (even with a 36" pry bar - I was scared I was going to break something, so I stopped).  Looking online, the suggestion was to hit a solid metal part of the axle from the middle of the car outwards in the direction you wanted the axle to pop out.  That worked incredibly well.  Because a picture is worth 1,000 words:

In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the drawing. The plan is to try using the vice grips to create a surface to his against, and shown in your picture. 

Im hoping the lip on the CV cup will help keep the vice grip from slipping off when hit. 

The axle is out. Milwaukee vice grip to the rescue with a perfect spot to attach the slide hammer:

An interesting side note, or not so interesting if this is common to automatic transaxles...

There was an output shaft that housed the female receiving spline, which was dry (and had 11 years of corrosion helping hold things together), and the seal on the transaxle (automatic) was to keep trans fluid from leaking around the transmission output shaft with the female spline and and not the stub shaft of the CV joint inserted into the transaxle. 

I hadn't seen that before, although now that I think about it when I replaced an axle on the 2010 Sedona we used to have I don't think I lost any fluid, but I may have also done a fluid/filter change when I replaced the axle (it's been >5 years, so a bit foggy on details).