6 minutes in you can see Thor at work

 

Thanks for the suggestions, PAhonda and doctorbee. I had seen that video from EricTheCarGuy. He's great. Probably watched it at least three times. I tried all his techniques and was not able to get the shaft out. And, even after repeated beating with the 3 pound hammer, still couldn't get the lower ball joint out either. I'm a small guy - 155 lbs soaking wet on a good day - so that may have something to do with it.

But, I am happy to report that the grumpy shaft has been removed. I am not too happy to report that I wasn't as gentle as I would have liked , but I don't think I had much choice. I used a modified version of EricTheCarGuy's method. I ended up prying it out, rotating it, prying some more, rotating, pushing (took some persuasion) it back in and repeated that about 6 (maybe more) times. Each time I did that, it seemed like the axle was getting looser inside the tranny. Finally, I was able to quickly pry it and it came out far enough and was loose enough that I could remove by pulling it. During the prying episodes, I put a little penetrating oil on the exposed part of the shaft. Seemed to help. I'm draining the fluid anyway, so I'm not too worried about contamination.

I inspected the shaft after removal. No fretting on the splines and the split ring wasn't mangled. I did notice that the splined end seemed a little dry. I thought it would be wet with tranny fluid. It had a darker greasy-looking substance on it.

The steering knuckle and lower ball joint are still happily mated, much to my dismay but, with some additional work, it didn't matter. The second shaft was removed by removing the lower arm pivot bolt and unbolting the sway bar and radius arm from the lower arm. Once the sway bar and radius arm were freed up from the lower arm, the second shaft removal was text book. Pop it with the pry bar and pull. Very little effort involved outside of the extra suspension goodies I had to remove. I noticed that the splined end of the shaft with the split ring was covered with tranny fluid, unlike the grumpy shaft.

Now that the driveshafts are out, I'll be working on motor and tranny mounts and then pulling the engine. Hopefully it's out Friday night.

Thanks again, gents.