Thoughts are with you Nick. Hope your Mom and Dad are back home soon. Agree with you on spending time with your friend. Lost my Dad to stomach cancer last week. He was diagnosed in August with stage 4. They tried some experimental chemo in the Fall that nearly killed him, he recovered some in Dec/Ja...

You have to pry is out of the end caps. I use a flat blade screwdriver and mallet to tap between the shaft end and the cup on the V/C end and the angle gear ends.

Good Luck!

Neil.

I suggest you buy two tools before you do much work on any vehicle:
1. A magnetic retrieval tool on a flexible stick.
2. A retractable claw retrieval tool on a flexible stick.
Both will save you much frustration. They are very cheap if you find generic brands.
volvolugnut

A trick I use when dealing with difficult nut (other than magnetic socket)...get a small piece of paper towel and stuff in the socket with some part sticking out of the socket. Once inserted, the paper towel keeps the nut from dropping. I wrote a detailed DIY here... 2004 V70 - Tail Light Assembly r...

Like many shortcuts. I find myself spending more time on the shortcut rather than just doing the job without the headache. Pulling the trim is all of a 45 minute job and once it's pulled you have no worry of losing any hardware.

Joined the P2 gang today, taking car for safety tomorrow.

Finally made it out to the junkyard - harvested both undercarriage braces. I was kind of surprised that they were still there, as the car has been in the yard for four years. So now I'll have to see how they fit. It looks like I would need some threaded inserts for the front one, but I haven't looke...

Remove PS pump, unbolt and shift aside alternator. Adds maybe 10 minutes to the job, but then you have the best access to the dreaded banjo bolt.

A new acronym as of today. RUD

" Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly "

Courtesy of a Space X engineer regarding today's rocket explosion.

I can see using this ......

So no more use oil for me??

Neil.