Myself, along with a couple friends, tried to take out my driver's side axle because the old one was manhandled. I got everything apart, down to just pulling the axle shaft out of the transmission/differential and we can not for the life of us pull this thing out.

As you can see by the pics, this is how my car sits as of right now. The inner boot was torn bad so I just removed the entire shaft leaving just the end part closest to the tranny as you can see by the pics.

Now I can move this thing about 2" in and out of the tranny, but cannot budge it any more just to pull it out. I have tried every crowbar as hard as possible and pretty much everything I can think of, is there something I'm missing?

04 ion redline btw...TIA!

 

try tying a piece of rope around it and attach it to a sledge hammer and yank that biotch out

 

do you have lsd?

 

no sir but i'll try the sledgehammer thing

 

ok then my idea wont work. sorry.

 

c4....

 

next morning bump!! any more ideas people??


huh?

 

You can use a pry bar, and very carefully pry between the trans and the tulip. VERY CAREFULLY. The trans case is aluminum and can crack, that being said I take no responsibility for any damage caused. Very light and quick pry's (like a rocking motion) usually will pop the stub shaft right out.

 

first, thank you for the help. but that's the thing, I've used half a dozen different pry bars and few DIESEL crowbars with no luck except what I've described in the OP, but I've been fairly careful when it comes to prying off of the tranny but being a whimp about it isn't helping me out. I just didn't know if there was a special angle or rotation or anything for that matter that I should be working with.

 

I replaced my shafts on my last car. I used a tool that seperates balljoints. I forget the specific name of the tool though.

 

kind of like a pulley puller that pushes/expands instead of pulls? there isnt much room under there from what I can see. hmm

 

use c4...expolosives...i bet it will come out

 

rofl to him saying huh when you said c4..... c5 is better tho....

 

lawl

 

there's a c clip on the axel shaft inside the tranny if your at the wrong angle it wont come out because of the c clip.. had the same issue and had it towed to the dealer and paid like 125 to get it installed and they covered new tranny seal and fluid..

 

No. It's more like a two pronged fork that tapers on each prong. It looks more like a wrench than anything. With no moving parts. I did my half-shafts on my old Neon with this tool.

I'm not saying this tool will work on a Cobalt but the tool is cheap and by the looks of your pictures, it should squeeze between the tranny and whats left of your CV joint.

Here's a picture of the tool.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

 

Commonly known as a pickle fork. More correctly a ball joint seperator.
They do come in a range of sizes, if you go this route make sure the space between the prongs is enough for the stub axle to fit in between them.
Insert and pry, if that doesn't work a little hammering on the end might pop it loose.

 

C Clip On Tyhe Axel Shaft Inside The Tranny... Trust Me!!!!

 

use a prybar and pry between the tranny case and the axle, with some tension hit the axle with a hammer, this is what i use to get 90% of axles out. using a pair of heal bars can work using the same method as above on very stubborn axles.